DAS JAHR IST WIE DAS JAHR VOR TAUSEND JAHREN

THOMAS BERNHARD

The Year...

The year is like the year a thousand years ago

we carry the jug and switch the rump of the cow

we scythe and bleat and know nothing of winter

we quaff our scrumpy and know nothing

and soon enough we'll all be forgotten

and the poetry perished like the snow before the house.

The year is like the year a thousand years ago

we peer in the woods as if in the stall of the world

we tell lies and make baskets for apples and pears

we snore while our perishing shoes

repose before the door of the house.

The year is like a thousand years ago

we know nothing

we know nothing of the end

of the sunken towns, of the flood in which the horses

and people were drowned.

THOMAS BERNHARD (1931-1989)

from "In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon", 

translated by James Reidel, 

Princeton University Press, 2006