Poems by Nicolas Born, translated by Eric Torgersen
CHILD
I don’t know
what to do with you
everywhere your red
blue and yellow blocks
get in my way
I’m too old
to understand your stories now
I can already see
my answers are too dumb
if you really want to learn something
go away
but that’s not all
should I perhaps
come out and say it (?)
you’re looking at me so wide-eyed
one
day you’ll be bent like me
then we’ll both wonder
what to do with ourselves
a big bus drives away with us
you’ll see that order
is made up of nothing but disorder
and there will be words (forgive me)
you’ll bump your head on
but
for now we get up together
catch cold together
you eat with me
sleep by me
speak to me and sometimes
look at me
as if you already knew everything.
(first appeared in Atlanta Review, Spring/Summer 2009)
That’s When He Learned What War Is He Says
I.
He has a feeling he might not come back
there in the avenue that narrows neatly
behind him just like in pictures.
But he’s hardly gone before he’s back again
I’m hardly away from the window
there he is giant-sized on a leave
that might always (he says to his wife)
be the last.
Everything about him is surprising
his voice in the hall
sounds a little different
(more like the voice of his brother
who’s missing in action)
you he says and looks at her comically
and asks—I’m gone--
where’s the boy.
They hunt me up
and pull me redfaced and eyes shut
from the jam-closet
They laugh as if I were joking
and insist that I laugh too
and be hugged and kissed
till I cry.
I didn’t like him any more
but now I like him again
he can tell right away and takes
all he can get.
It’s the feeling of distance you have
in Russia he says
it’s a mysterious country.
Later he decides to call it
Land of Contradictions.
There he is, bigger than life-sized
wants all at once to be my father again
that costs him money and a lot of talking.
I love him only when I’m riding
on the high shoulders
of this fatherman who’s been to Russia.
II.
Theodor Anton Friebe (40) hit me hard
he pulled me up out of corners
doled out the blows
(in between he turned around to see
if my mother still approved
she cried but nodded bravely to each new ration).
He’s an asshole I screamed
when father comes back he’ll kill him
but Theo Friebe
(asthmatic, acting mayor) said:
Your father is my friend
if you’re trying to blackmail me
I’ll show you your father
and took the picture in both hands
and chased me with it
I dodged to one side of my father
but Friebe caught me:
Here’s your father now apologize.
Friebe hit me hard in Millingen am Rhein
till with bloody nose I apologized
to my father who stayed
quietly on the piano after that.
III.
That’s when he learned what war is he says
but he brought back not even a scratch
no shrapnel in his back
that would change him
later
when it was my turn to serve.
He brought back stories
of contact with the enemy
that made good telling over beer
he brought back the admission
that he’d been afraid
which didn’t make it any easier
to believe him
but he stood there and made it all
make sense
“Churchill said: we killed the wrong pig”
and from ‘47 on
he loved me all over again
he hadn’t been amputated and hadn’t
not come back at all
I don’t know I think
I was relieved in spite of that.
IV.
He survived
he returned as a returnee
February ‘47 it was bright and cold
the poplar-lined avenue frozen solid.
He took off his cap at the cemetery
he raised his hand
and waved from down below
a thin, older man.
In the house it looked as if
he were getting married
they looked at each other he hugged her
she tore herself loose and cried on the dresser.
That night relatives came
and welcomed him with home brew
my father got drunk immediately
they brought him to bed
I came behind with his shoes.
Everything began again slowly
the problems survived the marriage
for a while I wouldn’t speak to him
he had lost the war.
V.
He said: I’ve mellowed
agreed more often with Adenauer
built a house
fought to have the last word
held down his job successfully
brought his children up wrong successfully
liked drinking
liked laughing
watched TV
mellowed and mellowed
when he was drunk
he wasn’t ashamed to cry
he protested with a heart attack
the untimely pregnancies of his daughters
but the issue
he took to his heart.
He fought with his wife over who
would outlive whom
but she proved him wrong in that by dying.
(first appeared in Field, Fall 2008)
originals copyright © Estate of Nicolas Born, translations copyright © Eric Torgersen