ELEGY
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
A PARTING FROM MAX SEBALD
He who was close to us
from far off seemed to have come
into our uncanny homeland.
Only a searching for traces
with a divining rod of words
that quivered in his hand.
Across conflagration sites
and burying places
he followed it,
through to raving madness
on Suffolk heaths.
Is this the promised land?
Earlier the dark had encroached,
but he moved on,
through all those nightmares
undaunted made his way.
That dust became light for him
we know from three lines alone:
So soundless I glided
scarcely stirring a wing
high up above the earth . . .
Translated, from the German, by Michael Hamburger.
An essayist as well as a poet, Hans Magnus Enzensberger is one of Germany’s most important writers.The latest English edition of his nork is Lighter Than Air: Moral Poems, translated by David Constantine (Bloodaxe Books, 2002)
Source: Irish Pages, Vol. 1, No. 2, The Justice Issue (Autumn - Winter, 2002/2003), p. 136
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