George Kalogeris

HOFMANNSTHAL: DAYS, IN TERSA RIMA

a translation of the original by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

I still can feel their breath on my cheek,

Though they vanished without the slightest trace—

Those days that were here just last week;

Those days that are always here today

And gone forever tomorrow. And this

Is something no one explains away,

Something too dreadful to express—

Though we know that even as we speak

Everything’s flowing away from us,

So far away it will never come back.

Unhindered as the rising fog

Of the self, which starts when a child can think

For itself, the days are a catalog

That doesn’t add up, and it strikes us dumb

As the blank look of a stray dog

[....]

George Kalogeris

When we try to make sense of what we’ve become

Compared to the child we thought we were.

Stranger still, the days are a stream

That flowed to us through ancestors

Who lived in another century--

Corpses wrapped and buried under

The earth are as much a part of me

As my own hair, each strand of which

Drifts on the flow of days, in the breeze.