Madness.

“mad”ness comes from the lazy epoch.
The aunt is mad at me.
the uncle comes home late.
The children are mad.
The dog is mad.
The housewife is mad at you—
The door is barred.
The ship is sunk, the crew
    is mad.

Translated by Gary Sullivan and Oya Ataman.

* * *

Das Böse.

das »Böse« kommt vom faulen Zeitraum.
Die Tante ist böse auf mich.
der Onkel kommt spät heim.
Die Kinder sind böse.
Der Hund ist böse.
Die Hausfrau ist böse auf Dich—
Das Tor ist verschlossen.
Das Schiff ist gesunken, die Mann-
    schaft ist böse.

* * *

Notes

When Oya and I first translated this, we translated the first two instances of "Böse," a noun, as "evil," and the remaining, lower-case instances, all adjectives, as "angry."

I was never happy with that translation, although it was accurate so far as meaning goes. But I thought it was important to use a word in the same way that Herbeck had been using "das Böse" and "böse," the way he does with "stamm" in the poem two poems down, and with other words, elsewhere: he plays with these kind of word-hinges.

After some gnawing at this, "madness" and "mad" were as close as I could get.

UPDATE: After talking with a woman I think named Melissa that I met at Emma's funeral, I've also just changed "foul epoch" to "lazy epoch." She thought it was more rightly "lazy." Based on that and, returning to this poem, on my sense that "faulen" is an adjective here ("faul," or lazy), and not the verb "faulen," "to rot or decay." Also-also, I have a vague memory that "lazy" was in Oya and my original.