Hilde Domin, Three Poems

Hilde Domin

(1909-2006; Jewish, pseudonym of Hilde Palm née Löwenstein; due to rising anti-Semitism emigrated to Italy 1932, then long exile in Dominican Republic from 1940, return to West Germany 1954; close friend of Nelly Sachs and philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer; influence of Alberti, Ungaretti, Neruda; defined poetry as resistance to the ‘one-dimensionality of conformist and silent functioning’; in her late poem ‘Choice’ she notes you are called to ‘stretch out your hand/
quietly/as if to a bird,/to the wonder’)

Autumn Crocus

For us, whose door-post
burned, marking
childhood’s years
centimetre by centimetre.

Who planted no tree
in our garden
so as to place the chair
in its growing shade.

Who sit on the hill
as if called to be shepherds
of the cloud-sheep passing
the blue meadow over the elms.

For us who are always on the move
‒ life-long journey
as if between planets –
searching for a new beginning.

For us
the autumn crocus is standing up
in summer’s brown meadows
and the forest is filling
with blackberry and rose hips –

so that we look into the mirror
and learn
to read our face
where arrival
slowly disrobes.

Choice

To be an almond tree
a little cloud
head-height above the ground
very bright
once a year

One in the little avant-garde
of spring
hurting no one but yourself
believing in a blue day
burning of cold

To be a little almond tree
southerly aspect Pyrenees
or in the Rhine valley
staying and growing
where it’s planted

But to walk along
by this almond tree
or to see it suddenly
when the train
comes out of the tunnel

to laugh and cry and have
the impossible choice
and to do nothing quite right
and nothing quite wrong
and perhaps lose everything

yet not become tired
of Yes-and-No and Gone-Forever,
rather to stretch out your hand
quietly
as if to a bird,
to the wonder

Withdrawal

I bid my words return
I entice all my words
the helpless ones

I gather the images
the landscapes come to me
the trees, the people

Nothing is distant
all are gathering
so much brightness

I part of all
coming back
into myself with all
and closing myself off
and leaving
the blooming brightness
the green the gold the blue
for those without memory