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Best Poems From
ERHARD HANS JOSEF LANG
(January 8,1957)
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1.
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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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2.
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Festival Of Lights Of Good Fortunes - In Praise Of Goddess Lakshmi
Light up all your lights, dear friends, and
Keep the backdoors of your houses well-shut this day,
For it is Diwali - the Indian festival of lights.
Yet recalling old strains of bad luck,
Lady Good Luck's elder sister, Alakshmi of Indian imagery,
Seen roaming our spheres often in a
Twin face of Lakshmi of good fate,
Shall not be given any chances of sneaking
Into our houses through the backdoor,
At a time when Goddess Lakshmi and her
Higher envoys to attend on
Our blazing ambitions and high-lighted resolves,
With all Her good fortunes in trail,
Is being invited to share with us for a day in a year
The full shine of Her good times.
This is why we have set our
Lights flaring throughout this day and night, hoping to
Inveigle the Fortunate Goddess to enter and abide in our home, too.
But, mind you, dear friends!
Lady Good Luck might come and take just
A fast look around in our house,
Just to see for Herself what really there is behind
That outward display of glory of ours in Her name,
And vanish as swiftly as she came, through the backdoor,
When unheeded and left open.
On the turn of heels in flight,
Of which we may perceive but the fading tinkling of anklets
She might just come and go, so as not to be forsaking us
Once that we raised a big show of Her worship,
With the divinely lit house's backdoor not properly locked up.
Unless, indeed, we took good care of
Our house of life kept tidy,
Without all its side-way entries and its outlets,
Including the ones in the house we made of our mind,
Neatly shut up on this special divine occasion,
Neither our human Lakshmi-like invited neighbour will find time
To come and sit down and stay for longer in our house
For sharing a cup of tea and one's sweeties
Nor will the great Goddess, called on in all her Fullness
From all sides.
Lakshmi is a bit of a choosy Goddesss, as
All of us easily are to understand, her good lucks not
Befalling each and everyone regardless of
Any distinctions, and after Her great pattern
Also the ladies of lucky matches in our visible worlds are of
The rarest in our neighbourhood to be met with.
- Realizing the whole of life itself as
One grand system of symbolism of a kind -
Closed backdoors symbolically stand for: forgiving! ,
Disallowing wonted cumbersome inroads from past sorrows & frustrations.
When we want this good luck of divine Lakshmi's,
If perchance we were to befriend her on a Festival Day of Lights,
To stay with us for longer or for good, with
Her ever lush graces showering onto us this time of the season, and
Not only to pose as a mere facade on our life's house
Fading fast away in bland eyes,
Verily shouldn't we want Lakshmi to come and enjoy our gift of lights
As a guest who, pleased overly and royal only,
Will lovingly stay with us a regular in our house and
Make friendship with us a long-standing affair of steady nature?
... Once that, in the very first place, we've already
That much of good luck that
On our chosen celebrated Day of Lights
We've come to be dealing with a Great Goddess
One who can go all places and be with all sorts of people
All at the same time...
We are calling up, not the country's president,
Who most probably wouldn't either - just couldn't - come to our house,
Lest you're that big fish that I am not,
Or befriended since childhood,
A free, omnipresent and all-knowing Goddess it is, and
One with a mind of bountiful, generous Lakshmi it is that
We are calling up on this Day of Lights, one
Who never has ever forsaken anyone
With a sincere heartful of golden ambitions,
That had invited the Goddess of Good Fortune's inspiring Self
Over to take a seat in one's own house.
Never anyone's given by Her unfair treats,
Once She has come to be one's guest in the house,
Unlike as among us strictly humans,
As long as only people never trumpeted out
Divine plans of the Fortunes offered in Her hands
Before the sketches are written,
- With the house's backdoors always well shut on Her arrival.
Unexpectedly favourable circumstances,
Eventually evolving stately events to be handed out by
A fate turning its benevolent face toward us,
Will be seen naturally, in the wake of
Another Festival of Lights remembered
Happily for one long year ahead,
With good turns to come to pass in our lives,
That in due time will be sharing their lights of glory
With all these bright fest lights of
Oil-lamps and scented candles
We kindle in our wishful praise of Goddess Lakshmi.
This day that once again a summons has gone out from
Ancient India's greatest visionaries of truth, from her
Star readers of the divine tablets of laws
Inside of God's cosmic enfoldings,
Who had read the heavenly
ornamental hieroglyphs of enkindled beauty on fire
Written on our black sky boards - eternity's backdropp -
This day a summons has gone out for us
To be enhancing God's endless
Divine Light yet in finite rows & lines of human-made shines
Down here on our top grounds of
Cosmic life on earth - now and here in gay array,
Lakshmi's Light to be held aloof,
Befitting to Her status as the
Secret Queen of all the riches existing for real or dreamed about
By very precious sets of ornamental lamps,
As all Hindustan does on Her day of days,
Having them illuminated without break for one day & one night
In a symbolic/mental/cosmic inner & outer balance of harmony,
Whose aggrandized face of lights will be reflected
In all peaceful faces of spirited holiday revellers,
As it will be felt in the sweet inner delight
Within the latters' shining homes.
And if I but were allowed one personal comment on
What in the end I feel will warrantee
True success & good luck with
Lakshmi arriving at the doorstep of one's house,
It is that it will have to come hand-in-hand
with our very own positive personal socializer attitudes
Put to tests all the while in our
Daily dealings with one another,
The selfsame attitudes that make us, knowingly or unknowingly,
Look either proudly and overruling, or egoistic and anti-social,
Or friendly and practical and endearing
In the eyes not only of Lakshmi, but also in
Those of all our other contemporaries.
If anything good were to be harvested
In festivities based on celestial myths of fine heavenly rites,
Be they lavishly designed or just simply lit
Suprahuman events performed on men's treaded grounds,
We ourselves also, with our minds, will have to
Catch from the fire of our votive lamps
Sparkles of the divinely lighted motifs
And, gleaming from within with the fires of heaven's messengers,
Announcing, to alert us, the arrival of the Goddess' party
We'll finally hear Lakshmi's knock on our own main door.
After all, dear friend, isn't everything in matters human
One big issue of attitude in how we fare in life?
And isn't all well-faring even on the lower and also
On the higher stages of life poised on
Something like sound, wholesome attitudes,
Below the human level a balanced control of powers,
Above the common human reaches an endless
Flurry of soaring divine intuition?
These are the things I've always tried to keep in mind,
Along all other lines that go with a divine cause.
Naturally all this of what I'm saying here only applies
If someone really desires by one's self, and
Be it just for a day's occasion, to
Take a divine stroll
In a royal park of heavenly imagery, as of
Gay India's enlightened soulscapes, and to
Follow suit on a wonderful, grand belief
On a day of glory,
Kept vibrant in its mother country
From times immemorial right up to this day.
We all want good fortunes to prevail throughout
And for real in our lives, and
Not just for a moment or two, and
Neither for flashy effects only during
Pseudo shows that entertain the lesser fortuned! -
Aside from mustering up our faith in
'Spirit over Mind, and Mind over Matter',
We ought to have verily our lights burning physically!
- While God does see all of our unacted intentions,
It is only proper to prove that we mean
What we express by symbols
By virtually performing the rituals in universe time, just as
Children intuitively get themselves
Absorbed into simple games about life.
For bringing in the sacred momentum versus our own selves
In what we're doing to call up a great Goddess it is
That we keep on this day of Diwali, the Festival of Lights,
Great lamps glaring in our homes,
Remindful of the high essentials of the ancient myths, and of
Our benignly secretive mother Lakshmi, Lady of good lucks!
Celebrating Lakshmi's Day Of Lights makes for good entertainment,
'Tis a choice fun of street happenings,
If done so from house to house - and,
On top of all, 'tis
A wonderful life enhancer in general,
Attractively smiling lights of grace
Seen as one most wonderously lit face of happiness,
On a divine face with human features,
The face of Goddess.
HAPPY DIWALI
(written on Diwali 2006, October 22)
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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3.
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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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4.
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The Spring Time Of Life Creativity
A spring time of life creativity
Long before us
There once had been -
This is from where we humans, too, are derived -
The Merman and the Nymph within the waters -
Universal Fluidum -
These are our origin, our kinship most intimate! -
And First Man, first to see sun's light on earth
Nourished by the saps through a hole-black Vulva,
Embossed into secret earth retreats,
Centrifugally centripetally
fertilizing,
Would have certainly had, you'd bet,
His visions
Set in tune with the unembodied premium
Young & sportive Cosmic Couple's dream creation world
That had parented Him in Her,
God all around,
Very accurately -
So many funny, strangely physical, quirky
Animal gook & geek heads to be
Visualized in dreamy mindscapes of sudden inspiration then,
Out of which grand seeing in
Gay times of Spring seasons, and a
Veritable peak time in young Nature come alive,
It holds that
The abounding nature spirits possessed of
Ever stronger body dreams naturally are
Pressing for the creation of
Themselves in Earth's solid matters,
All these selfsame animals, first seen in hazy dreams,
Now suddenly hopping around in flesh and horned,
Out there, beyond the loam -
The grand stage enactionment
Orchestrated through alignment of webs from
Threads spun in Cosmic Mind with the lively motions on
The planetary seed of our globe, the
Furtive spur for the earth seed to germinate,
Seconded and carried on further in First Man's visionary faces -
The earthen destillary's utensils handled
Through Her various moods of global tempests
And Her lighter weather tempers,
And Their means of fine-tuning the ladling storms cross- & directionwise,
On this our so revolutionary globe,
Destined to be focused on by real-time Gods in the making,
For the act of
A mysterious Creation's high-spirited,
Cosmodreamvision-empowered encapsulization into divinely
Potent magic seeds of ever more & more variegated new forms and
Figures of Life frolicking, all of which eventually
Chance to be mixed up, boiled and
Served out in seed form by
The adventurously playful cosmic visionaire's
Quickening arm of reproduction
In some deep-bottomed vaginal cups
On the rock of earth, during the festival of this
God's world arena's grand self-enhancement, with all
The happy-go-lucky planet's earth spirits concentrated and
Gathered in for a most favourably weathered
Spring time season of (r) evolutionary creation -
All spiced up ingredients of lively matter red-hot with
Most vibrant energy.
A season, surpassed since long by
Another era of actions on the globe,
The ones before us and the present one,
That but until this very day, though
Not any longer bent on diversifying seed creativity -
(With our human demigods taken over the command
Rather to the contrary as of now) -
Reverberates still so wondrous
Through high and low of the earth planet's go.
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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