Poetry from The Literary Review



She

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Moon
Tops
Olive
Firridge

Hazy
Waked -

Blue
Squats
Snow -

Stirless
Brush
Blacks
Mute -

She
Strips -
Naked

[circa 1924]

      Translated from the German
      by Irene Gammel



Thunder and Lightning

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Let me drink your lips -
Let me swallow your breath -
Let me taste the perspiration of
Your windtangled skin

Your black hair cascades
In love's throes -
Your face lightning - thunder
A drunken flower.

[circa 1912]

      Translated from the German
      by Irene Gammel



Analytical Chemistry of Progeny

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

My bawdy spirit is innate –
A legacy from my Dada -
His crude jest bestowed on me
The sparkle of obscenity

My noble mother's legacy
Melancholy - passion - ardour -
Curbed by gentlewoman's reins
Exiled from castle - spoilt gentility

I am - gleaming fruit at the tree top
Fulfilment - brilliant design
Of a thousand-year-old marriage manure
Genius - idiocy - filth - purity

Whether you love it or turn up your nose
Whether it pleases you or not
It grows - develops - pops off the tree
Circling ball – nude in stockings

What is necessity - Lala! The world -
What Brooklyn Bridge -
Glass-blackened waves and foam

[circa 1919]

      Translated from the German
      by Irene Gammel



Cosmic Chemistry

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

“Live and learn”
“life = 1 damn thing after another”

Life is science -
     God knows! –

                     1
        Life = wombcrucible
        Spirit = phalluspistol
        Matter = ashes
        Loss = gain =
        Purification

2
Bloodsucked
Sucking
Alive:
Money breeds.

                     3
        Lethe:
        Orgasmic
        Transition coma.

Money is bloodsucking-bloodsuckled
Life
It breeds

Death is
Orgasm
Lethe

Spring summer fall winter
birth sex decline death
eternity

*Lethe: Greek mythology, the river of forgetfulness

      Translated from the German
      by Irene Gammel