To explain the usefulness of the Lehrstücke to you

Knowing as she does that I exert myself

To serve your cause.

THE 21ST SONNET

Hesitant, lifting the black receiver, so

Much fear was in me I had no delight

In the word cured. It was not till night

I vowed I’d send you a dream and a laudatio.

This is the dream: when you step into the daylight

Our guardian beasts shall bow their heads to you

And raise them trumpeting the respect you’re due

For such conspicuous valour in a mortal fight.

Praised be whoever won’t cast down the burden

That she was charged with though the ground give under her!

The greatest victory: the one that seemed beyond her!

The smallest whitest beast shall give you thanks for this

That you by courage and by canniness

Saved us the fighter and the good woman.

SONNET

And now it’s war and now our way is tougher.

You fellow-wayfarer, my given comrade

On level ways or steep, narrow or wide

Teacher and taught, both being both together

And both in flight now with a common goal

Know what I know: that this goal’s not more

Than the way itself, so should one of us fall

And the other let her, let him, only setting store

On the goal itself, the goal would disappear

Become unrecognizable, nowhere known

And breathless at the end the one arriving there

Would stand in sweat and a gray nothingness.

Here where we are now at this milestone

I ask the poem’s muse to tell you this.

SONNET NO. 19

One thing I do not want: you flee from me.

Complain, I’ll want to hear you anyway.

For were you deaf I should need what you say

And were you dumb I should need what you see

And blind: I’d want to see you nonetheless.

Given to watch for me, companion

The way is long and we’re not halfway done

Consider where we are still: in darkness.

“Leave me, I’m wounded” is not good enough

And nor is “Somewhere,” only “Here” will do.

Take longer with the task: but you can’t be let off.

You know, whoever’s needed is not free.

But come whatever may, I do need you.

I saying I could just as well say we.

THEN AT THE LAST, WHEN DEATH . . .

Then at the last, when death, who is not implacable

Showed me the four ruined lobes of her lungs and shrugged

And could not ask it of her that she live on the fifth alone

Speedily I assembled another five hundred tasks

Things to be dealt with at once, next day, next year

In the next seven years

Asked countless questions, critical questions, only

Answerable by her and so in demand

She died more easily.

WRECKAGE

There’s the wooden box still for the notes when a play is being constructed

There are the Bavarian knives, the lectern is still there

There is the blackboard, there are the wooden masks