Stefanie Golisch
(Germany-Italy)
from: Il mestiere di vivere
Loosing
A middle-aged man, kind and peaceful by
nature, is packing his bags. When everything
is stored properly, he pauses, takes a seat
on the edge of the bed, then starts slowly
to empty his poor luggage. The train is
supposed to leave at noon, but he can’t tear
the eyes away from the still life, arranged
around him by a refined Flemish painter on the
purple polyester bedspread. I’d prefer to stay a
while longer, he says lowly, but there is
no answer, no way
Rumbling
The most mannerly of them all is the only
black boy among the milk white kids in his
school. Actually, he has no choice, since this
is the only way to be pardoned for his
scandalous blackness: to always be kind
and to never raise his voice. And how could
his teachers not love this kid who make them
feel so good about their own goodness? In fact,
they truly believe that he loves them too for
being so generous to oversee his blemish.
However, he doesn’t. He smiles to them,
feeling confused because something in all
this is profoundly wrong. But how can he put
it into the language of reason? How can he tell
in white words the deep shame rumbling in his
dark bowels?
Being alive
Lanky young waiter on a rainy Sunday
afternoon, sad café in the country.
A coffee? Yes, please. A slice of apple
pie? Yes, please. With cream? Yes,
please. You’re reading? I’m always
reading. What are you reading? Lorca.
Who is he? He said, he was the shadow
of his tears. I’m raining with the rain,
he is raining with the rain. What else
did he say? He besang life and they killed
him. That’s the whole story? Almost,
I say. (Don’t’ worry, I’ll leave the book
on the table for you)
Growing
Little Wilhelm is growing every day,
a fighter for justice and injustice as
occasion demands. A warrior by nature,
let’s say, the opposite of a dancer in
the same realm of ghosts and shadows.
Proud of his irrefutable realness we see
him lurking behind an old oak tree, facing
the world as if it was made of stone and
thunderstorm. There he is, stout little
Wilhelm, armed with a stick and a sling,
a big straw hat on his bare, milk white skull,
ready to win the day to come
Giving
Here I stand love, my thin-skinned hands
wide open, nothing inside but early spring.
I stand in a place where you are not. It’s
raining softly and I let it rain. Here I stand
and will not move any further. I might be
in a dream, but I’m definitely not the dreamer.
I‘m real. Please, come and see and kiss. It’s
only for the sake of those without hope that
hope is given to us (says Walter Benjamin.)
Kissing
Their one and only movie kiss took place
on a late January evening in the unheated
changing room of the McDonald’s branch
on Sunshine Drive, while the other, named
Jennifer, was still serving at the table. For
a day or so her tip-tilted little nose would
conserve the incomparable smell of his
long greasy hair, a bouquet of happy meal
and strawberry milkshake, consumed on the
fly, empty-headed among men and mice
Leaving
That morning he had left home as usual
around eight, knowing she would have
spend the day in the delightful company
of Billy the kid, the old, hackly canary.
Torn between the very strong wish to live
and to die, she opened the birdcage and
the window. Month were to pass before
one morning a man she had never seen
before brought her a faded postcard,
kind of a winter wonderland. Not a single
word, however, she knew it was him.
Actually, there was not much to say
and just to break the almost embarrassing
silence, the man asked her to go out for
a pizza and she said yes, then no
and then yes again.
Cooking
We gather stones, we pick grass, we
cook soup on the open fire, it’s not bad,
but never good enough, we gather bones,
we pick flowers, we cook soup, but still,
it’s not tasty enough, we give it a fancy
name, we add white feathers, rare words,
dead birds, sad little pebble-stones, our
greed, our need, our thirst for sweet milk
and honey, uniqueness, happy childhood,
challenges and lies, always bigger and
bigger stones
____________________________________________
BIO
Stefanie Golisch was born in 1961 in Detmold/ Germany. She studied German literature in Bonn and Hannover. 1987 she took her master degree and in 1991 her PhD in contemporary German literature.
Writer, translator and literary critic.
Books on German authors: Uwe Johnson (1994) and Ingeborg Bachmann (1997)
Vermeers Blau (novel), 1998.
Short stories, essays, reviews in literary magazines and anthologies. Translations into German and Italian in books and magazines.
From 1994 to 2002 she taught German literature at the University of Bergamo and since 1988 she teaches German in a public high school in Monza.
Recent publications:
Antonia Pozzi : Worte Edition Tartin , Salzburg/ Paris, 2005. (translation)
Pyrmont Erzählung Edition Thalaia, St. Ingbert, 2006 (English translation: The living thing
(Culicide Press) 2010.