Blue.

The red color.
The yellow color.
The dark green
The sky ELLENO
The patentender
The pedestal, the ship.
The rainbow.
The sea
The shoreleaves
The water
The leaf vein
The kleyf (R) “r.”
The locks + the lock.

Translated by Oya Ataman and Gary Sullivan.

* * *

Blau.

Die Rote Farbe.
Die Gelbe Farbe.
Die Dunkelgrüne
Der Himmel ELLENO
Der Patentender
Das Sockerl, Das Schiff.
Der Regenbogen.
Das Meer
Die Auenblätter
Das Wasser
Die Blattnarbe
Der Schlüßesl (R) »r.«
Die Schloß + Das Schloß.

* * *

Notes

This is the last poem in the first section (1960-1966) of Im Herbst da reiht der Feenwind. In many ways it's one of the strangest and most beautiful. Note how the associations seem to move through actual, visual space: from the ship, to the rainbow, to the sea, to the shoreleaves, to the water, the leaf vein (both water and leaf vein seem like visual "flows," and both can be said to "stem" from, if that makes sense), to the key/clef ("Schlüßesl" not being a word in German, but rather a hybrid of conclusion or key to something, and musical clef--note too its relationship to Schloß, or lock), and finally lock. Locks and lock attempting to account for the "Die" to "Das" switch in the German. (We originally had Padlocks + padlock, as Schloß also means castle, and "pad" is of course slang for where one lives, but on second thought, that just seemed a bit too cute, so I reverted to the present lock(s).)

In a sense, after the sweeping vista of this poem, the key or conclusion is found in the veins of the leaf, which Herbeck I think consciously relates to the water.

An odd coincidence: Reading Hannah Weiner's Open House this morning, I was struck by one of her early poems (Weiner, like Herbeck, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia):

The Alphabet of Revelations

A key
a leaf
a stemmed pipe
a stemmed glass

twisted wire
has torn canvas
unlocked
maple dreams

the leaf also has a stem
the key also has a stem

Going back to Herbeck's poem, note the lowercase letter r in quotes. Why? One real possibility is that the r visually looks like a key--a skeleton key, almost--and, like a key, has a stem.