David Sings before Saul

Summary

I.

King, can you hear my harp which, when I strum,

moves us through distances its taut strings cast?

I play; discordant stars go sailing past,

until in our descent, like rain at last,

in places where we fall, the flowers bloom.

Girls spring up, and you recognize them yet,

who now are women grown, seducing me.

You sniff young scent and feel its potency,

while tense and slender boys enact their stet

behind doors where they're breathing secretly.

I wish my song could bring this back to you;

but notes are staggering in a drunken blur.

Your nights, my King, your nights! What could they do,

so shattered by your power — young girls who

were lovely? Oh, how all their bodies were!

Because I sense this — all your memory brings —

I can accompany it. But say which strings

will sing the pleasure moans of him or her.

II.

King by whom all this was once possessed,

and who with merest life has overmastered,

overshadowed, me: at my behest,

step down and play my harp's iconoclast —

that harp your life and power give no rest.

It's like a tree picked clean, stripped bare — as though

through boughs that bore you fruit there comes the gaze

of something deeply far away; of days

now drawing near — days I can barely know.

Don't let me sleep beside it any more,

my harp. King, do you see this boyish hand?

Do you believe that what it's held before —

the octave of a body — can't be spanned?

III

König, birgst du dich in Finsternissen,

und ich hab dich doch in der Gewalt.

Sieh, mein festes Lied ist nicht gerissen,

und der Raum wird um uns beide kalt.

Mein verwaistes Herz und dein verworrnes

hängen in den Wolken deines Zornes,

wütend ineinander eingebissen

und zu einem einzigen verkrallt.

Fühlst du jetzt, wie wir uns umgestalten?

König, König, das Gewicht wird Geist.

Wenn wir uns nur aneinander halten,

du am Jungen, König, ich am Alten,

sind wir fast wie ein Gestirn das kreist.