Reluctant Whispers of Kissed Lips (Seifert)
Reluctant Whispers of Kissed Lips, by Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986)
Reluctant whispers of kissed lips
which are smiling Yes —
I’ve long since ceased to hear them.
Nor do they belong to me.
But I’d still love to find words
kneaded from
bread dough
or the fragrance of lime trees.
Yet the bread’s become mouldy
and the fragrance bitter.
And all around me the words sneak on tiptoe
and stifle me when I try to catch them
I cannot kill them but they’re killing me.
And blows of curses crash against my door.
If I forced them to dance for me
they’d stay mute. And they hobble.
Yet I know very well
that a poet must always say more
than is hidden in the roar of words.
And that is poetry.
Else he could not with his verses lever out
a bud from honeyed veils
or force a shiver to run down your spine
as he strips down the truth.
(Trans. Ewald Osers)