It is Day 559 of the daily poems. And it is 14 June. Today Scotland and Germany meet in the first match of the UEFA EURO 2024. So the question is: shall we post a Scottish or a German poem today? Well, as 14 June 1158 is the official founding day of the city of Munich, the honour will fall to a translation from the German, by our translator poet Timothy Adès. Arno Holz (1863 – 1929) was a German naturalist poet and dramatist; it would have been neat if Munich had been his home, but in fact he lived in Berlin. His ideal was that art is to be as close to nature as possible.
I just saw the wind
by Arno Holz 1863-1929
translated from German by Timothy Adès
I just saw the wind,
That heavenly lad,
As deep in the wood I lay dreaming:
And who came behind
With light-footed tread
But his brother, the summer rain, streaming.
The treetops were swayed
To one side and t’other
As if the wind played
At rocking his bed
To the song of his brother
Who crooned as he slid
From one leaf to another.
How it was, there’s no knowing,
Too wondrous to say,
The raining and dripping and blowing:
A child, there I lay,
And children were they,
Rain and wind, and I harked to their playing.
And then the night fell
And before I could tell,
They were gone, who the magic had woven.
The mother so kind
Of rain and of wind
Had called them back up into heaven.
Arno Holz
translated by Timothy Adès