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Best Poems From
ERHARD HANS JOSEF LANG
(January 8,1957)
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1.
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Stefan Zweig (translation with the original in German)
Fulminating, irradescent, roaring,
life takes leaps onward to,
tears away to come along,
and it lets go again of none,
it renders hot, and renders bold,
and makes one joyous and great,
shakes one up and makes one be
more alert with a powerful nudge,
never it allows the tidings of splendour to ebb away,
no it never does -
it seizes you and holds you,
gushing towards onto you,
a torrent takes hold of you,
with you speeding away,
what no wild creek, no whirlwind,
no flood waters can do,
this breathing has done it already thousands of times,
this hot, searing, crystal-clear word.
Cool then and still like a Nordic lake,
glistening and soft like snow falling fresh,
it comes to stand vis-a-vis us,
like a multitude of primeval gold,
that is rolling through the fingers heavy and of an aged red,
beautiful like otherwise only an unspeakable dream,
that looks at you with deep shine from out of a darkening space -
and rises then up, as if reflecting on itself,
and again takes to seizing,
tears away to come along,
yells at you, laughs at you, weeps at you: that am I!
And what takes you into its grip is a longing-for
that is sweet and hauling,
a longing after people, a hot: 'Promise! '
and then it is fading away sounding like a nightingale song.
by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (1924 - 1942) , Jewish descendant of German settlers in Romania, deported & liquidated on December 16th 1942 by the Nazis during WW II
translated by Erhard Hans Josef Lang after its original in German:
STEFAN ZWEIG
Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger
Leuchtendes, glühendes rauschendes Leben
springt an und reißt mit und läßt keinen mehr los,
macht heiß und macht kühn und macht freudig und groß,
rüttelt auf und macht wacher mit kraftvollem Stoß,
läßt die Fluten von Glanz nie und nimmer verebben -
packt dich und hält dich und sprudelt dich an.
Sturzflut erfaßt dich und rast mit dir dort -
was kein Wildbach, kein Wirbel, kein Hochwasser kann,
hat dies Atmen vieltausende Male schon getan,
dieses heiße, verzehrende, glasklare Wort.
Kühl dann und still wie ein nordischer See,
glitzernd und weich wie frisch fallender Schnee,
steht es uns an wie viel uraltes Gold,
das altrot und schwer durch die Finger rollt
und schön ist wie sonst nur unsagbarer Traum,
der dich ansieht, tiefleuchtend aus dunkelndem Raum -
und bäumt sich dann auf, als besinne es sich,
und packt wieder an und reißt wieder mit,
schreit dich an, lacht dich an, weint dich an: das bin ich!
Und es packt dich ein Sehnen, das süß ist und zieht,
ein Sehnen nach Menschen, ein heißes: 'Versprich! '
und dann klingt es aus wie ein Nachtigall-Lied.
Note: Stefan Zweig was a Jewish Austrian biographer, essayist,
short-story writer, and cosmopolitan, who advocated the idea of an united Europe under one government. Zweig achieved fame with his vivid and psychoanalytically-oriented biographies of historical characters.
He was born on November 28th,1881 in Vienna, Austria.
He studied philosophy, and then started writing poetry, dramas and translated many French works into German. Eager pacifist, he was dreaming of an united Europe; the First World War deeply hurt him, and was a turning-point in his career.
He started writing short stories, which had great success and made him very famous. But because he was Jew, he had to leave Austria in 1934. Unfortunately nowhere could he find peace of mind, and his despair concerning the war made him commit suicide at Petropolis (Brazil) , on the 22th February,1942, where he and his 2nd wife, his former secretary, who followed him, got a state funeral.
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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2.
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Flying The Dragon
Modern man has come to know
to tame the horse for riding it.
Why would our hominide ancestors,
contemporaries of dinosaurs,
not likewise have known to
make use of prevailing animals in their time
for their own personal transportation? -
And if on land, why not as well through the air?
The varied species of the dinosaurs,
of the volatile as well as of
the non-volatile kind, for the most part,
were herbivorous, and, as such, rather tame,
already by their very nature,
with only a few exemptions of them being predators -
thus, certainly, they were as tamable
as is the horse in our geohistoric era!
Jesus the Nazarene lived in a line
of about 100 fathers before our own.
The hominides that have been in a position
to roam the quarters of the globe
on the back of dinosaurs were living
at a time from at least 350.000
progenitors onwards before our own fathers
created you and me
in the present generation.
And they must have known well
all the corners of our globe then,
much better so than any commoner of today.
In those days the first major waves of migrations
of peoples have taken place;
on the backs of dinosaurs.
Explanatory notes:
As it comes to the factual side of what I'm saying in Flying The Dragon, as
far as all hints suggest, only the fewest species of dinosaurs had
taken to eating meat, with most of all the others living on leaves and the
crude plants of their days.
The feared vicious dragons, known from Western legends, yes, those
obviously would not have been suitable for domestication, since they were the last, fierce and most resilient remnants of all the many other friendly, herbivorous species from those times that eventually were not
remembered any more. (Sadly, it had always been like this that the good, less dramatic stories are the ones forgotten first) .
Naturally the tame dinosauri were the easier hunting prey versus the dreaded 'fire-spitting' ones remaining over, and in the end what was left of all the many friendly dinosauri of the old days, indeed, there were
only those evil dragons (poor specimens on a wretched stand who
understandably then turned very aggressive out of sheer survival instinct!) .
Moreover, on what were to be said about domestication, those
prehominids of then (like the recently discovered Toumaï-hominid) were less domesticated themselves, but were more like wild nomads freely roaming around and exploring our mother globe, eventually embarking on mass migrations off to better grounds.
There are various reports in ancient human tales, which over times had
evolved into the so-called myths or legends, that all explicitly tell
about engagements of hospitable dinosauri by humans, also as means of transportation.
Best maintained are the myths from ancient India, since it is only
there that their ancients' traditions are still vibrantly alive until today in one evolved unbroken line - and there is these Indian tales about the giant bird Garuda (after which Indonesia's air carrier nowadays is named) said to be the vehicle of Lord Vishnu, and who in various stories is said to have assisted worthy people in speedily transporting them through the air. And there are other such stories with different giant birds who shouldered humans for flying them somewhere.
I should have even wanted to go further in what I wanted to say in this
piece, but since, to some, this might be a real shocker, I'll let it
out here in this explanatory note: what actually made prehistoric monkeys evolve into the modern human race stems from their acquired habit of hanging on to dinosauri - woosh - to be speeding away along with them through the air.
This is what eventually triggered in their monkey brains the
thrill to start questioning things, to start thinking, and getting the
feel for upright motility. That's how it could only be thought of as
having happened. There is nothing else that could explain what could have made monkey to gradually evolve into the smart being that we are, if not for the fact that they were children of good luck being taken around through lofty skies by host animals bigger than ourselves.
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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3.
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Hecate Invocation (traditional)
[Hekate is a Goddess of the Moon and the Underworld of ancient Greece
and Rome]
Goddess of the cross-roads,
Goddess of Manic-Depression,
Dweller in the deep places of the earth and mind,
Traveller in the land between worlds!
Torch-bearer! Protectress of the very old and the very young;
Protectress of those used and abused;
Healer of those who are torn apart;
She will be there for us when we call on her and at the end.
Grandmother to lost children and to the downtrodden.
Nurse to the suckling infant,
Comfort to the lone man or woman in the darkest night.
She who seeks vengeance for her children who are wronged!
Wanderer and prowler!
Sorceress who lives at the edge of the mind.
Drawer-up of the secret compost from the unused internal well.
She who has no relatives on the earth save for her children.
Without Mother or Sister.
Lady on the brink, both bi-polar and uni-polar!
They call her mad, and it is she who terrifies the disbeliever and the
unworthy!
Bringer of nightmares!
But she it is who sooths the sleepless and disheveled spirit.
Mother of night!
Dark Power of the moon!
Keeper of the shadow!
Walker of the endless highways!
She unites those who follow her as her children; the Hekite.
Bearer of the sacred poppy.
Shape-shifter, Transformer.
Keeper of the hounds of Hel and the three-headed dog Cerebus!
She walks abroad in the hour of the wolf and under the Dark Moon!
Hear my call O Lady and cover us with your starry cloak.
Let the unborn moon seed in my heart this night.
And let her growing light shine upon our intention;
That she be at our full deliverance,
So Mote it be!
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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4.
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Questions And Answers With A Crystal Ball - In And Out Of Time
There once was a man who wanted to
Have his problems in life solved by a crystal ball witch
Who, through her absorption in a medium game,
Claims to draw up as by a magic hook
To anyone's query
The ultimate, most correct prophetic statement,
After once having taken to rolling off,
Making the ball more & more shine up
Leaving for an intensified state of inner seeing,
With head and heart set solely on visualizing the
Symbols that are to unfold a full whole line of prediction,
To come up for the human supplicant with
Her pictured reply to any yes-or-no question.
For as to be wooed by man, an ambitious woman's desire is one of making up
A shining star among other human flowers,
In likewise manner a crystal ball seer is bent on the matching of the inner and outer attire
Like as if it were that of a high goddess',
Who she comes to make up from the within,
For an existence coming alive by the knowledge of power and by
The art of accessing the eluding heights of a client's chosen matter for a question, is her profession.
Flying by the guide of intuition as if flying by wire through
The convexing heights of the ball of mind -
To be saying sooth in words of truth
That spring up in direct flash-downs from
Out of cosmos' deepest fountain source,
Towards which the visionary head at times of her medium intuiting
Keeps its mind tilt steady.
Which is what any gypsy bard does once the hood is pulled up
And who started to roll off,
Rolling off ever higher,
Coming closer and closer to the very soul of the thing
That mattered, and be it
Matters of a young fool's or any dumb-struck haggler's,
Folded up in a world gone blind through clumsy hands over
Mad tears with matters that never ought to have mattered,
Still she would set, a true queen of soothsaying,
Her well-trained toy to be a perfect medium,
Crystallizing truth, glittering erratic
Like a ball of invisible gas gradually shaping up
From over and across manifold riffs of sparkling energy
Within a huge, dark, endlessly deep ocean that is
Spanning the shores of mind.
As it is
When man makes up mindful thoughts from in between the sounds of the animal
Shooting up in many hues through his brains,
Cannon balls of sounds with strong meanings,
Voices of twisted tongues lolling to probe out into
One's own share in the human rise-up of nature,
Where every soothsayer's client with a secret question on his tongue, too,
Has his footing.
Likewise, a virtual sooth sayer's footing is to be based in the crystal ball.
Thus, at one point in time such
A seer, whose life
Means heated calls to the visionary ball, by
Customers heated by queries of lively matters,
Had misinterpreted one of her client's moving finger, trusting it to be the
Hint on the right moment for her, the mystic tool, to roll off, to be
Spinning away with secret oscillation,
Swinging inwardly with the unseen swinging of the crystall ball,
Triggered into its spin
After the formal posing of a question in mind done,
Spoken or unspoken, all the same to the genuine wizard:
And twice it was then that
The seeker of the soothing word already had
Shortly left and gone out,
in between the sessions, from
The royally elated soothsayer's tent,
Twice having reappeared for a new show,
Two times thus enforcing an abrupt interruption of
The ongoing ill-timed roll-off of the wizard's ball of truth -
Rather a delicate thing to let happen
Since soothsaying may well be truthsaying, too,
Whereas otherwise it's true, too, that the truthsaying power gets exponentially less potent,
The more it is untrusted to the more dubious client,
Such as to one playing truant,
Who only comes to test the eye of the ball or to see
The mystical limits of all the things that
People are claiming his money could buy for real.
But once came this client who was after
Obtaining real clues to the mending of his room of life lying in shambles,
From a good word of truth by a crystal ball seer,
After a frustrating period of wished-for but failed thrusts at good times for him and his love..
'Ill-doomed affairs might bring up the worth of another try, so as to be better, '
That exactly was what the client had thought,
When he moved with the finger to the crystal ball's eye,
Setting the eerie seer off for the start of her mental plunge,
Taken to be after the formation of the request question,
Diving into the world of the client by
The spinning crystal to be forming the mirror of a most proper answer
To one ordering her services at the crystal ball table,
While actually then the gypsy's head was running ahead of the mystical task-order-to-be,
Rolling off with the stabilized ball on an erring note,
Stabilized as it was at a time when the client had not yet formally posed in his mind the question to the gypsy, who was
Thus actually diving, by a mistaken signal, after nothing at all.
But when the client had stopped the spoilt, premature session already twice,
And was back in for his third attempt, trying to get the timing of question and answer aligned -
A secretive customer, as he was, who insisted on
Not speaking out aloud his query,
Posing the one question in silence, before
Passing the sign for the mystic and her ball to start -
When he chose to take up in his mind for the third try
Simply for once a test question
For his gypsy at the magic ball,
And signalled, properly this time around,
With the
Unspoken question in mind being such:
'Have you not been aware that no question had yet been put forth by me,
While you already had started to roll off for the answer,
Already two times? '
From the depths of the crystal ball
Eventually came up the following line,
Seen by the mystic eye of the soothsayer:
'Did you think that every foolish question of any ugly customer were to be replied to by me? '
A stunningly fit reply to a silent question
Not exposed otherwise than in mind
For a crystal ball and her gypsy,
And even more so, when the gypsy and her crystal ball were without eyes and ears
But a phoney electronic simulation of virtual brains and their crystallizing introspectivity,
A smart application for use on a palm-sized intercommutable mind contents servicing table board, one
Of the latest gimmickry in the history of men
Before the final start of peak joy in
Our world and our great partying time
Here in this house for humanity, yet under renovation.
Now, if it had been looked on by any user-to-be of that device
As something questionable in a telecommunicator's stall at hand,
At least with some such devices there's indeed something to it,
As we have come to see
In this very title's event.
* * * * *
This poem was inspired and written after a real experience with a crystal ball application for mobile phones which may be downloaded for free by pressing on the jar.button on the Russian wap servicing page found at http: //wap.mypuk.ru/download2/games/java_s60/others/2569_r.wml, after previously having once made a rather disappointing experience with another such device by a different provider.
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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