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Translated By Michael Hofmann Read the translator's notes

A bunch of glads,

certainly highly emblematic of creation,

remote from frills of working blossom with hope of fruit:

slow, durable, placid,

generous, sure of kingly dreams.

All else is natural world and intellect!

Over there the mutton herds:

strenuous ends of clover and daggy sheep—

here friendly talents,

pushing Anna to the center of attention,

explaining her, finding a solution!

The glads offer no solution:

being—falling—

you mustn’t count the days—

fulfillment

livid, tattered, or beautiful.

Source: Poetry (November 2009).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Poetry magazine

• from “Late”
  by Gottfried Benn
• Dress Rehearsal
  by Chloe Honum
• Finis Poloniae
  by Gottfried Benn

• November 2009 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
• About Poetry magazine
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More about this poem

Biography

Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) served in the German army’s medical corps during WWI and used his clinical experiences as inspiration for his first collections of poetry, Morgue und andere Gedichte (1912) and Fleisch (1917).

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Poems by Gottfried Benn

• from “Late”
• “Zeh was a pharmacist”
• A Shadow on the Wall
• Asters
• Beautiful Youth

• More poems by Gottfried Benn (26 poems)
  • Can Be No Sorrow
  • Caryatid
  • Divergences
  • Evenings of Certain Lives
  • Express Train
  • Finis Poloniae
  • Fragments 1953
  • Hymn
  • Jena
  • Last Spring
  • Left the House
  • Little Aster
  • People Met
  • Radio
  • Static Poems
  • The Young Hebbel
  • They Are Human After All
  • Think of the Unsatisfied Ones
  • Threat
  • Tracing
  • What’s Bad

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Nature, Trees & Flowers

POET’S REGION Germany

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Related

Audio

• The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Expert in Earth, Eager in Flesh
• The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Poetry Takes a Walk

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