My thanks to my friend Brian for introducing me to these poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph Karl Benedikt Freiherr von Eichendorff, which where set to music by Richard Strauss https://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/german/four-last-songs-the-poems-that-comprise-the-final-song-cycle-by-richard-strauss/.
My favourite is, I think September by Hermann Hesse.
I pass
People behind
Opaque glass.
I find
They say
Words, half-heard
As I, caught behind
My own cracked glass,
Half lose my mind.
A child’s laugh
Can bring me back.
But fragile glass
So easily cracks.
I heard a leaf fall.
It fell, dry and dead,
And rested there
On greying head.
And brought a thought
Of the passing kind
Into my so mortal mind …
My clock’s chime
Makes background sound
As I rhyme.
I raise my glass
To old Father Time
Who will outlast
This poor rhyme.
When the wife of vicar Ted
Was found in another man’s bed,
It caused great consternation
Among the vicar’s congregation.
And the bishop turned bright red …!
Stuck to my shoe
With nature’s strong glue.
An odd little pod
With your innate need
To spread your seed.
Yet I did deny
The seed’s eternal cry
And you entered in
To my bathroom bin.
I know a young lady of pleasure
Who says her name it is Heather.
I was warned by mum
To avoid the hot sun,
But she didn’t say anything about Heather …!
I recall honeysuckle on a wall
And the scent of Grandfather’s roses.
The poet composes
A rhyme
To Time
Who ends all.
I once had a lover named Glover
Who said she would have no other.
But I caught her with Moriah
And the entire male voice choir,
And a vicar who knows my mother!
There once was a girl named Lou
Who composed a poem about her shoe.
But as it didn’t quite fit
They said, “change it a bit”.
So Lou changed her poem and shoe!
K Morris - Poet 