Oh! To Be In Love Again! Poem by Alexander Shaumyan

Morgens und abends zu lesen

'Der, den ich liebe
Hat mir gesagt
Daß er mich braucht.

Darum
Gebe ich auf mich acht
Sehe auf meinen Weg und
Fürchte von jedem Regentropfen
Daß er mich erschlagen könnte.'*

-Bertolt Brecht, Liebesgedichte


This crazy woman keeps
sending me countless emails,
so I stop responding
and she gets really mad -
what's the matter,
the cat got your tongue?
suspecting me once more
of hiding behind some
secret internet identity -
and I just want to tell her
that she's nuts -
for I have no patience
with any more games,
or with any more Norse
bisexual women writers
with hyperactive sons,
trading lovers like shoes
and cheating on their
geeky husbands,
making more of themselves
than they really are -
and I don't care about
the sex anymore -
it all really sucks -
hell, I can do much better
with my left hand -
I just want to be left alone,
but she keeps telling me
her whole life's story
and I just delet her emails
without reading, thanking
her for the books she
sent me just to be nice,
and she keeps telling me
that Bush is the Antichrist,
that his number is 666,
and how she is really
my soul twin because
God brought us together,
and money is the root
of all evil,
and something about her
husband being a closet
homosexual and how he
wants to divorce her,
then she starts talking
about me and my problems
with women and my
therapist and she
can really help me out
if I only open up,
but I don't want to open up -
I've had enough of crazy
and promiscuous women -
I just want to meet someone
nice - someone a bit more
normal like myself (as I laugh
at the thought that there is
anyone really normal)
though they are good at
pretending and stroking
a guy's artistic ego -
no, I refuse to give up,
I just say to hell with it all,
for I don't play by anyone's
rules and hell... Well,
as Sartre would say:
'L'enfer, c'est les autres.'**



October 21,2005

__________________________________
*Translation by J. Beilharz

To read in the morning and at night

My love
Has told me
That he needs me.

That's why
I take good care of myself
Watch out where I'm going and
Fear that any dropp of rain
Might kill me.

-Bertolt Brecht, Liebesgedichte



**French: 'Hell is other people.'