en

13598

Logo lyrikline pure Logo lyrikline claim
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
all results
  • Contact
  • Partners
  • Donation
  • deutsch
  • english
  • français
  • slovenščina
  • العربية
  • русский
  • español
  • português
  • 中文
  • POETS
    • A-Z 
      • A
      • B
      • C
      • D
      • E
      • F
      • G
      • H
      • I
      • J
      • K
      • L
      • M
      • N
      • O
      • P
      • Q
      • R
      • S
      • T
      • U
      • V
      • W
      • X
      • Y
      • Z
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        nepali
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        yiddish
    • by countries 
      • Albania
        Algeria
        Andorra
        Angola
        Argentina
        Armenia
        Australia
        Austria
        Bahrain
        Bangladesh
        Belarus
        Belgium
        Bolivia
        Bosnia and Herzegovina
        Botswana
        Brazil
        Bulgaria
        Burundi
        Cambodia
        Canada
        Chile
        China
        Colombia
        Congo - Kinshasa
        Costa Rica
        Croatia
        Cuba
        Cyprus
        Czech Republic
        Côte d’Ivoire
        Denmark
        Dominican Republic
        Egypt
        Estonia
        Ethiopia
        Finland
        France
        Georgia
        Germany
        Ghana
        Greece
        Greenland
        Guatemala
        Guinea-Bissau
        Haiti
        Honduras
        Hungary
        Iceland
        India
        Indonesia
        Iran
        Iraq
        Ireland
        Israel
        Italy
        Jamaica
        Japan
        Kenya
        Kuwait
        Latvia
        Lebanon
        Libya
        Lithuania
        Luxembourg
        Macedonia
        Malawi
        Malaysia
        Malta
        Martinique
        Mexico
        Moldova
        Montenegro
        Morocco
        Mozambique
        Myanmar [Burma]
        Netherlands
        New Zealand
        Nigeria
        Norway
        Oman
        Pakistan
        Palestinian Territories
        Paraguay
        Peru
        Poland
        Portugal
        Puerto Rico
        Romania
        Russia
        Saint Lucia
        Saudi Arabia
        Senegal
        Serbia
        Singapore
        Slovakia
        Slovenia
        South Africa
        South Korea
        Spain
        Sri Lanka
        Sweden
        Switzerland
        Syria
        São Tomé and Príncipe
        Taiwan
        Trinidad and Tobago
        Tunisia
        Turkey
        Ukraine
        United Arab Emirates
        United Kingdom
        United States
        Uruguay
        Uzbekistan
        Venezuela
        Vietnam
        Yemen
        Zambia
        Zimbabwe
  • POEMS
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        arawak
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        maori
        marathi
        nepali
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        tumbuka
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        western frisian
        yiddish
    • in translation 
      • abkhazian
        afar
        afrikaans
        albanian
        arabic
        araucanian
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        berber
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        catalan
        chechen
        chinese
        chuvash
        corsican
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        esperanto
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        haitian
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kannada
        kashmiri
        kazakh
        kirghiz
        korean
        kumyk
        kurdish
        latin
        latvian
        lezghian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        mayan language
        mongolian
        nepali
        norwegian
        occitan
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        sardinian
        scots
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        swiss german
        tajik
        tamil
        telugu
        turkish
        udmurt
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        yakut
    • genres & aspects
      • experimental poetry
      • concrete poetry
      • sound poetry
      • visual poetry
      • humorous poetry
      • poetry for children
      • performance
      • with music / sound
      • poems on poetics
      • political poetry
      • poetry projects
      • series & cycles
      • dialect
      • erotic poetry
      • narrative poetry
      • spoken word / Rap
      • translingual / hybrid / Pidgin
    • poetic forms & terms
      • ode
      • haiku / tanka
      • collage / montage
      • Dinggedicht
      • prose poem
      • rhymed stanza
      • renshi
      • sestina
      • sonnet
      • terza rima
      • villanelle
      • ghazal
      • ballad
    • issues
      • society
        • traditions
        • identity (collective)
        • history
        • homeland
        • cities & urban life
        • economy
        • social critique / cultural criticism
        • politics
        • war
        • exile
      • life & relationship
        • age
        • memory
        • work
        • eating & drinking
        • family
          • birth
          • child
          • mother
          • father
        • friendship
        • gender & sexuality
          • woman
          • man
          • sex & eroticism
          • homosexuality
        • identity (personal)
        • infancy & youth
        • body
        • Dream
        • love
        • travel
        • religion & sprituality
        • death & grief
        • loss & separation
        • illness
        • time
        • alcohol & drugs
        • relationship conflict
        • marriage
        • funeral
      • culture & science
        • architecture & design
        • photography & film
        • art & painting
        • literature & reading
        • fairy-tales & legends
        • music
        • mythology
        • philosophy
        • popular culture
        • language
        • theater & dance
        • medicine & science
        • poetry & poets
        • writing (poetry)
      • nature
        • spring
        • summer
        • fall
        • winter
        • landscape
        • water
        • animals
        • plants
    • Rhythmic Patterns
      • Parlando
      • Cadence
      • Variable Foot
      • Sprung Rhythm
      • Syncopations
      • Rubato
      • Permutations
      • Gestic rhythm (= Stressed Enjambements)
      • Cut-ups
      • Ellipses
      • Syllabic decompositions
      • Lettristic Decomposition
  • NEW
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Translations
Login
  •  

Donald Berger

The Ghost of Good Bread

  • 1 The Long Time | Translations: de
  • 2 The Wall | Translations: de
  • 3 People’s Stage | Translations: de
  • 4 To Be Where the Sun Is | Translations: de
  • 5 Annisquam | Translations: de
  • 6 Tom Madigan | Translations: de
  • 7 I Forget | Translations: de
  • 8 Television | Translations: de
  • 9 The Ghost of Good Bread | Translations: de
  • 10 Epistle | Translations: de
Language: english
Translations: german (Der Geist des guten Brots)
  • play
  • pause
Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

The Ghost of Good Bread

He limped, and I was limping too.
I almost spoke to him,
But we looked past each other.
I had a heel spur, or a hole in my heel,
Nasty stuff, partisan, too, with irritability.

The sky had about eight colors in it, like it was healing from something
It hadn’t been told of.
Joe Cocker was singing what sounded like “Unchange My Heart.”
I knew around four hundred and fifty people.
My lower legs flared out a little bit, so that I looked like I was made of glass.
I was driving something the size of Edinboro.

When my mother was born, she named me Leif, pronouncing it Life,
After life on earth.
Whether in my mind or close to where I was standing,
Whether I was strong or just thought I was strong,
Teachers still called to me, the city and I were still a decent match.

Every minute a strong train wished itself through.
I saw the clear thin ropes attached to long-stemmed roses
Hanging in windows over the highway.
I could feel people walking on top of the ground.
When I first wrote that last piece, I said she is going to love this,
And she didn’t, and then wrote to tell me she did.

Back at the time when people were everything,
When sitting with them was almost as great, there was a second
Major difference that I still couldn’t put my finger on.
Now “we’re” reliably in the background,
Less nervously in charge,
Miles of dry runs past the fading point.

Imagine saying, You won’t get anywhere
Without your particles.  
Brain stuff, too, the brain as a bed
And the colors of the pills we’re going to hold.
The way science has said it
Will draw us the same strange picture
People have always been asking for,
Like the life it’s slave to isn’t riddle enough.

It could have been Yogi Berra who said
You are only as good as your last poem.
There was something wrong with the drawers,
The kind of place where they sew up your lips
And try to tempt you into conversation,
Curtains that were impossible to clean.

No matter what you put in my stomach,
You want me back in my arms,
Everything taken home
And strobed, and the rain
Sprocketed.  He limped, and I was limping
Too.  I saw a mess of wild boar, scared
To death just driving past them.

Later there were some drops, just a few,
As I switched to the lake.
The owner rolled out an awning and someone screamed “Wunderbar!”
A man turned his head in this direction, his glasses
Barely hanging off the tip of his nose.
A woman thought, I’m going to have a baby,
And a man beeped at her—she was in the way of his car.

© Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015
From: The Long Time | Die währende Zeit. Poems | Gedichte
Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2016

Translations:

Language: german

Der Geist des guten Brots

Er hinkte, und ich hinkte auch.
Ich sprach ihn beinahe an,
Aber wir schauten aneinander vorbei.
Ich hatte einen Fersensporn, oder ein Loch in meiner Ferse,
Hässliche Sache, verbohrt auch und reizbar.

Der Himmel zeigte ungefähr acht Farben, als ob er von etwas genas,
Von dem man ihm nichts erzählt hatte.
Joe Cocker sang etwas, das wie »Unchange My Heart« klang.
Ich kannte etwa vierhundertfünfzig Leute.
Meine Unterschenkel waren etwas ausgebeult, so dass ich aussah, als
          wäre ich aus Glas.
Ich fuhr etwas von der Größe Edinburghs.

Als meine Mutter zur Welt kam, nannte sie mich Leif und sprach es
          wie Life aus,
Nach life on earth.
Ob in meinem Kopf oder nahe dort, wo ich stand,
Ob ich stark war oder nur dachte, ich sei stark,
Riefen Lehrer immer noch nach mir, die Stadt und ich waren
          immer noch ein ordentliches Paar.

Jede Minute wünschte sich ein starker Zug hindurch.
Ich sah, wie an den langstieligen Rosen die durchsichtigen dünnen
Seile befestigt waren, | Die in den Fenstern über der Autobahn
hingen. | Ich konnte spüren, wie Leute auf dem Boden gingen. | Als ich
zuerst das letzte Stück schrieb, sagte ich, sie wird es mögen, | Aber sie
mochte es nicht, und schrieb mir dann, dass sie es mochte.

In jener Zeit, als Leute alles waren, | Als mit ihnen zu sitzen fast ebenso
toll war, gab es einen zweiten | Hauptunterschied, auf den ich immer
noch nicht meinen Finger legen konnte.
»Wir sind« nun verlässlich in den Hintergrund getreten,
Weniger nervös verantwortlich,
Meilen von Trockenübungen über den Punkt des Verblassens hinaus.

Stell dir vor du sagst: Du wirst nirgendwohin kommen
Ohne deine Teile.
Auch Kopfzeug, das Gehirn als ein Bett
Und die Farben der Tabletten, die wir halten werden.
Die Art und Weise, in der die Wissenschaft es ausdrückte,
Wird uns genau das fremde Bild zeichnen,
Nach dem die Leute immer schon verlangt haben,
Als wäre das Leben, dem sie ausgeliefert ist, nicht schon Rätsel genug.

Es könnte Yogi Berra gewesen sein, der sagte,
Man sei nur so gut wie sein letztes Gedicht.
Irgendetwas stimmte nicht mit den Schubladen,
Die Art von Ort, wo sie einem die Lippen zunähen
Und versuchen, dich in ein Gespräch zu verwickeln,
Vorhänge, die man unmöglich sauber bekam.

Was immer du mir in den Magen gibst,
Willst du mich zurück in meine Arme,
Alles nach Hause gebracht
Und vom Licht abgetastet, und der Regen
Ein Zahnrad. Er hinkte, und ich hinkte
Auch. Ich sah einen Haufen wilder Eber, zu Tode
Erschrocken, gerade als ich vorbeifuhr.

Später fielen einige Tropfen, nur wenige,
Als ich zum See hin wechselte.
Der Besitzer fuhr eine Markise aus und jemand schrie »Wunderbar!«
Ein Mann drehte seinen Kopf in diese Richtung, seine Brille
Rutschte fast von seiner Nasenspitze.
Eine Frau dachte, ich werde ein Kind kriegen,
Und ein Mann hupte sie an – sie war seinem Auto im Weg.

Aus dem Englischen von Christoph König
Aus: The Long Time | Die währende Zeit. Poems | Gedichte
© Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015
previous poem
   (Television)
9 / 10
next poem
(Epistle)   
listen to all poems

Donald Berger

photo © Peter Berger
* 25.05.1956, New York City, United States
lives in: Baltimore, United States

Donald Berger was born in Queens (NYC) and grew up in NY and MA, attended the University of Massachusetts and the University of Washington, and lived four years in Germany, where he was a Fulbright Fellow.

He has taught language, literature and writing for more  than 28 years, at the University of Maryland and Montgomery College, and teaches currently at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Donald Berger is the author of The Long Time, a bilingual collection of poetry in English and German from Wallstein Press in Goettingen, Germany, and two other books of poems, Quality Hill (Lost Roads Publishers) and The Cream-Filled Muse (Fledermaus Press).

 photo © Peter Berger
His poems and prose have also appeared in The New Republic, Slate, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, Ironwood, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, Fence, The Massachusetts Review, and magazines in Berlin, Leipzig, and Budapest. 

Publications
  • Quality Hill

    Poetry

    Jackson, WY: Lost Roads Publishers, 1993

  • The Cream-Filled Muse

    Chapbook

    Fledermaus Press,

  • The Long Time | Die währende Zeit

    Poems | Gedichte

    English | Deutsch. Aus dem Englischen von Christoph König

    Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015

Links
  • Review of 'The Long Time | Die währende Zeit' at Fixpoetry

    Donald Berger ‒ Ein Dichter für DichterInnen ist zu entdecken

    Website (de)

Remember poem / Add to List

all public lists

Poem already on my list

If you want to remember or list a poem, become a community member.

Login/Register now
more poets from United States more poems in english Translations into english

Random poem

PUSH!

gedicht page complete: (0,855s)
  • About
  • Links
  • Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Produced by
  • privacy
lyrikline is created by Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with its international network of lyrikline partners