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Best Poems From
ERHARD HANS JOSEF LANG
(January 8,1957)
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13.
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Corruption On The Loose - Shall Always Be The Winner? (translated excerpt)
...If you've stained your matrimonial life, deceived your creditor,
gained by lies your neighbour's pasture and field;
if you've hurt your fellow-being's coat of innocence or good reputation,
and with guile rendered yours
the token of the oppressed, which you had taken as a pawn:
Then you must not turn despondent, even though how grave they'd sue you at the court.
Soon only endeavor after an attorney, after one
who bears his good conscience in the manner that
he wears his sleeves, as if a priest's,
who feels amused as highly by disputes,
instances of taking advantage as by quarrels,
as may feel a man, who's been out at war,
who's come to find lots of things to plunder,
one whose heart is full of spitefulness,
whose head of trickery,
his soul full of deceit and daring malice,
who writes seven lines only on one page,
but always swells all his writings into twenty folders,
who produces as many expenditures, as what is desired in every cause of conflict,
as he tosses and turns the procedure
until the case will have gone on for many a good year.
Him you ought to fill his bent hands with golden treasures from Ophir*,
then soon will he lash out and hit on the rights of the opposite party;
then even turn to the counterpart's and win that attorney's favor, too;
bestow him a gift of a stately piece to wear,
a staunch and fat pig,
a barrelful of grape wine, as well as other nice things,
thus you will make that one mild and
he'll be favouring you, too.
Likewise go and see the judge, and fill his hand -
wild men at hand * - with gold from the Hungarian land *.
And should he refrain from taking your things; then give them to his wife,
damask, silk and velvet for her body,
ribbons, laces, linen, and furs for her petticoats,
Fill up their store-rooms and kitchen house;
thus you'll gain for any pending case more time,
your attorney will put things off,
your judge procrastinate them;
although how hard your opponent might attempt to see the final verdict coming.
Should he complain, o dear, tired of all the payments,
asking for justice at long last,
then it will be pointed out:
'you have no rights.
He who's been sparing the money shall always be the winner'...
(translation into English from its original German by Erhard Hans Josef Lang)
________
an excerpt from the satirical work
THESE VICES WHIPPED BY THOSE FAUNS
by German poetesse
Sidonia Hedwig Zδunemann
(*Jan.15,1714
+ Dec.16,1740)
[explanatory notes:
faun - the spirit (lat. genius) of an untamed place in the woods, that resembles below the waistline a goat and above a human, used here in a sarcastical sense;
* Ophir - a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth, King Solomon is supposed to have received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, every three years;
* wild men at hand, * with gold from the Hungarian land: obv. references by the poetesse to some scandals that had occurred in her days]
* * * * * * *
A judge's daughter, Imperial laurel wreath bearing poet Sidonia Hedwig Zδunemann from Erfurt, Germany, died 26yr-old caught in a weather of thunder and lightning out in the open in the winter of 1740, a wooden bridge collapsing underneath her as she was riding across on horseback on her way to her sister's
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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14.
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Dose Replay Set Replaced
Dose replay set -
Those replaced!
Spiralling up heroic heights,
Reaching out tall as spires,
To make the golden signet
Ring of royal human composure one's own,
Waiting there in the subtle airs to be taken?
All the world's aspirations are for troubled hire,
Who would not tire?
Thus, our life of routine, why not make it
A truly fit vessel
En route for most beautiful shores, destinations! ?
Maybe to just
Think a bit bigger, friends,
And change first ourselves,
And then our world into exactly one,
As we'd select her where to live in,
Of all the choices in dreams? !
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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15.
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Dumping The Biggest Multiple Nuisance Factor
Money is today's world's biggest multiple nuisance factor.
Money had been invented and introduced to be used
As a common standardizer in our ancient forefathers'
World of simple tradings
When the value of goods were hard to be measured, and
Barters led to quarrels coming along with
Blows exchanged in between
Fools in need and the smarter of the many.
Our hominide predecessors must have seen the coming of
The decline of morals along with the spread of
Trading with all kinds of articles, and
Subsequently opted to leave the evolutionary stage for the
More sapient new-comer races, us faces, to take over
That commencing world of immense toil of commerce -
Which we are still labouring with so hard until this very day,
O poor vain human race!
While long since it should have been time to
Enter into the human race's
Higher, more advanced game stages -
With no mare problems about these wages!
Money actually should have become fully redundant the very day
That finally all the various kinds of products
For people to avail of
All of them were commonly standardized everywhere on the globe
Through and through up to the last notch,
As is being the case these days,
Things thus rendered very easy for level distribution amongst all,
Without any need for protectionism through
A go-in-between buffer such as posted by money
Hovering over and above all heads involved in human barters.
Now, in our world commercially so overheated,
All the products are not only all but standardized,
They are well all
Supra-, hyper-, metastandardized,
As transstandardized
Transfixed all into values of odd numbers
Beyond a rational, strictly material appraisal,
All of which is happening
Under a gloomy, self-spinning net of
Grand commercial magic delusion -
Over time gone totally out of hands.
While that emergency means as the solution to the
Old Babylonian barter trade,
The faculty of money they then had invented,
Still loiters about until this very day,
- Even more so than ever -,
Existing today but only to be a mere multiple nuisance factor,
Causing all kinds of human idiocy
Centering around all things that
People manufacture to provide for each other's use.
Since for balancing the householding difficulties and the
Deficiencies in estimating the values of all goods,
What money was meant for in the beginning,
There is no more need in this modern world.
Most frightening about money, I feel, is but the fact
That even until today, in spite of its actually having lived way beyond its peak time,
No one, not a single soul, but for my poor little self, ever
Dared to even think or talk about
Eventually doing away with this cursed money.
The Egyptians in humankind's younger eras would have been laughing at us today,
Were they to have come to see
To what degree we moderns have allowed their good old money
To be corrupting the human element in a highly cultured society
Beyond any norm of intelligent practicality.
Those people of the young flourishing kingdoms by the Nile
Had already then been warning us that
'Riches only make sense
When they are applied to a good cause.'
When will finally WE apply our wits and
Eventually do the necessary, and
Rush to be abolishing redundant money?
Might it come too late one day?
What disaster could this possibly mean for the human race? !
We'd better start thinking now of how to be getting beyond money
Before we might be getting caught in a
Final global human catastrophe.
Or our children might experience a new type of holocaust, man-made, but
Working its ravaging way through sickened nature,
While it will be our lot to be returning to this intelligent civilization
Time and again
By way of
The law of transmigration!
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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16.
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Eclipsing Untimely Queues On Whims Of Practical Intuition
Nor briskets nor biscuits,
No greens, no grains to eat left over on the shelves
Where to feed on at home
Time again it was to go shopping for life's victuals.
Money that buys the things first was needed to get more of.
Ah, what a terribly huge crowd of clients
Inside that bank then again, and
How many hours again of life's precious time
I'd lose over waiting for my numbered deal
After I was through with this queue?
'I could have easily done my shopping in the meantime
While I'll be waiting in here -
50 numbers ahead of my own turn, '
I heard another one say, likewise caught
In the waiting's turning-mill.
And suddenly, carried on a
Whim of practical intuition,
Making true on the word just heard
I went to betake myself away, out from the bank,
On the very same thought of what my wearied by-stander had sighed.
I left, with my number tag stuck in the left hand,
Left the bank, without a note or coin for a bill to be paid,
Hied into a nearby mall's grocery station,
Where all the goodies are there for the buying,
Took the shoppers basket cart and started
Filling it with all kinds of goods, item by item
Selecting exactly what I thought I needed.
My purse empty, but
The bank's number tag all the while
Stuck In my left hand.
Bread-fruit, canned food, some tastes of
Liquid for drinks & morsels to snack on,
Sugar, salt, chillie, cheese,
Maybe something special yet for
The unexpected valued guest that might come visiting in the house...
Staples and extras in no time, thus, as it were,
Filled up the shopping basket to the brim.
And, yes, time had elapsed by then,
Since I had unqueued myself from waiting in the bank.
I placed my shoppers cart in a corner of the mall's
Where it would be out of he way of all others -
All the while with the bank's number tag still
Stuck in my left hand -
Went back to the bank, and lo, right
In time for
My turn to be served,
I signed request and receipt scrips,
Took and pocketed the given urgent argent agent
- Money -
Made it back to the trade-center
Retrieved my barrowful of houseware
Cashed in on my counter bill
And hadn't I gained, on top of all,
Paid by nothing else but a leap on a daring whim of the moment,
One and a half hours of quality time in life?
In another instance, on an
Autobahn diversion forest override,
A never-ending queue of cars and nothing but cars
was that time
That time-snatching chain of waiting in queue
I once again dared to unqueue myself of.
That queue was caused by something graver than
What any money, even how painstakingly awaited, could purchase one:
Due to a fatal series of crash-on
Accidents of several cars on the run in that stretch
Total blockage there was of all traffic
On all lanes, on that very superhighway
Where I was then gliding down in an automobile,
On a drive only for shopping for the extra rare foreign article,
There in one of cosmovillage Munich's unique railway kiosks,
Wanted just one interesting reading material,
Only there as they sold anything in
That exotic language I had learnt.
But suddenly all vehicles, small and big, slow and fast,
Ended up being diverted, through
The billowing far-stretching countrysides, from the
One Autobahn outlet before the disaster spot to the
One Autobahn entry behind the disaster spot,
Porsches and Gogomobiles alike, back to back,
Mercedeses and Unimogs teeming flank by flank with
Cow-herders from the nearest village goading home over the road
Their cattle to their night shelters,
Smiling into the faces of frustrated racing-car drivers -
Stuck in a queue of no end of cars
That were all melting up into one endlessly long metal snake
Meandering for two and half hours extra and additional,
On a stretch they would have covered, if on the Autobahn,
In a matter of minutes,
Now trapped in such a mess, up and down
Provincial hills along romantically winding hillbilly-roads
Through forested stretches,
Across farmers' meadows and fields,
And through their slow-life villages.
I was about to give it up and just
Cancel my trip, getting delayed thus,
When I had this glorious idea:
Why not simply overtake the whole long line of cars ahead of me
From inside the forest on its forest roads,
There left and right of the main street?
(Though entering forest grounds with a motorized vehicle
Required a special permit
I, a nature boy,
Was not afraid of drives into the woods) .
And so, one more driver, aside from the cow-herder
Who had smiled into the frustrated Porche chauffeur's face,
Was peeping over to that same face
And with a similar satisfaction,
This time I myself up there right in the woods,
Before turning off along my chosen dark-hidden nature's path-ways.
Eventually, after all my ways across areas of farm land,
I found myself back by the Autobahn entry
Where the accidental diversion was getting started.
The traffic police by then were still busy
Diverting more & more of on-rushing cars.
But I was the only one that came from the other direction
And I crossed the Autobahn on a bridge right there
To go from where I also was to pass back into the next possible
Autobahn entry,
Coming but down all the way from the other side,
I, the only one of
All the other hundreds and hundreds of other vehicles,
Who had gone on a trip of his own,
To the other side.
And after some twenty minutes - only -, I was meeting
On the first batch of all those other car buddies helplessly diverted,
The very ones that I actually, had I stayed within the queue,
Would have been truckling yet some two hours behind of.
And hadn't I then experienced,
Paid again by nothing else but a leap on a daring whim of the moment,
Another one & a half hours or more of quality time in life?
This is a song of freedom of one
Who at regular times
Toggles along with others like all the others do, too.
Erhard Hans Josef Lang
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