Comforted

My mother's breast was big and white.

Snuggle up to the teats.

Batten, before it revolves into bottle and rubber.

Threaten a stammer, complexes

if it should be withheld.

Whining is not enough.

A clear meat soup lets the milk jet in

or a stock of cods' heads boiled till it's murky

until fish organ of sights blind,

roll off in the vague direction of bliss.

Men do not nourish.

Men squint homeward when cows

with heavy bags obstruct

the road and rush-hour traffic.

Men dream of the third breast.

Men hate the suckling infant

and always perceive deprived.

Our bearded breast-fed babies

who, taxable, earn our keep

smack their lips in stills between engagements

while they lean upon cigarettes.

After forty all men should be suckl again:

publicly, at a fixed price,

till they are comforted, wishless, and needn't cry out anymore,

cry in the john alone.

Gunter Grass, born in Danzig in 1927 is Germany's greatest in quantity celebrated contemporary writer. His greatest in quantity recent work is The Call of the Toad, a novel. These piece of poetrys are from Novemberland: Selected piece of poetrys 1956-1993, translated by Michael Hamburger.

Michael Hamburger lives in Suffolk England. He is co-translator, with Christopher Middleton, of a previous Grass volume In the Egg and Other metrical compositions published by Harcourt Brace in 1978

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Mar 1996

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