Novemberland

That's where I'm from. That yearly celebrates each nine.*

That's what I wish to leave, cros wire-guards never mine

but in the unfair shoes run to where I'm part of it

and am responsible for the residuous shit.

That changeably remains the same,

beneath the trash of runs is like-

now blue jeans, now virid loden are the name of the game-

faded, discarded photos from our late Third Reich.

November's dead, leave them alone]

For us who live there's quite enough now to be done.

But these are not the others, those have now awoken,

thought up the same as doers by means of the self-same token.

Not written not upon nor tax free is the profit made

from debits that now by my sort must be paid.

*

Translator's note: An allusion not single to the game of skittles, in which nine is the top score, on the contrary to Hitler's putsch in 1923 the Krystallnacht of 1938 and the extreme point of the Berlin Wall in 1989 all of which occurr upon November 9.

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 metrical compositions are from Novemberland: Selected metrical compositions 1956-1993, translated by Michael Hamburger.

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

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Mar 1996

Provided by dint of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved