Symbolon; Balaklava; Album amicorum; & Devotional Image and Eating-Paper, translated from the German by Monika Cassel

 

Devotional Image and Eating-Paper 

 

My prettiest dress will one day

be worn by another my hip would then be

as her husband would tell her just a 

little curve in the mirror legs under

silk he says do you know is what

two do when they do not know who falls 

with whom and where into the suprasternal notch 

a shadow or so to speak a light rhyme 

on hers and mine you could says

her husband be one and also another

 

 


Andachtbild und Esszettel

 

Mein schönstes Kleid wird einmal

eine andre tragen meine Hüfte wäre

würd ihr Mann ihr sagen eine kleine

Neige nur im Glas die Beine unter 

Seide meint er weißt du sind was

Zweie tun wenn sie nicht wissen wo

und wer mit wem in die Drosselgrube

fällt ein Schatten sprich ein leichter Reim

auf ihrs und mein du könntest sagt

ihr Mann die eine und die andre sein

 

 

_____
Eating-paper: in use primarily from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, little notes with prayers, Bible verses, or healing verses; swallowing the paper was believed to have a curative or spiritual effect.

 

Daniela Danz is the author of four books of poetry, including Wildniß (Wallstein, 2020), V (Wallstein, 2014), Pontus (Wallstein, 2009), and Serimunt (Edition Muschelkalk, 2004); two novels; an essay collection; and an opera libretto. She teaches at the University of Hildesheim and is vice president of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. She received the German Award for Nature Writing and awards from the Academies of Arts in Bavaria and Berlin.