Four Last Songs
Four Last Songs
The sound was like picking sad battles,
The red that white imagines yellow is.
It was the sound of forgetting what
To do with the senses, being equally
Surprised by a voice subsiding, come
Slowly back, or edging toward actual close.
I’d forgotten to pay attention for years
To a song I heard for the first time
At the end of a recent memorial,
An actual song by Strauss about going
To sleep, predicting one’s own death, etc.
Let me say this: I was surprised it kept
Going then surprised that it ended.
This was always true but could be more so
Much like those years of not knowing
The song felt brought back now
As inattention to its presence then.
And there are many versions
Of Four Last Songs and of this one,
As many as there are people
Who’ve made and played them.
Each one stands as someone’s else,
The color of fading color, lastness
Pluralized because going to sleep
Keeps redoing the translation
Without fully having done. But this
Only applies to Beim Schlafengehen
From the Four Last Songs of Strauss.
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