Sibelius (Hmv 6) Poem by johannes lewinsky

Man lebt noch einmal
Quoth the raven
Once and once only
From the uppermost branches
Of its heimat
Yggdrasil

In the midst of life
This gloomy kingdom
I stand besieged
By women
Debts and alcohol

This world's a haunt
For the weak-willed
And the condemned
Who have

No greater need
Than to be desired
For that which they have never yet
Learned to become

Only the sun
In its abject brilliance
Redeems
Man from himself

Only the sun
Locked in its own
Burgeoning catastrophe
Knows

What it is to be
Self-defeating
Self-engendering

Which leads us to consider
How to contain
When it comes

This excess of givenness
Notes cadences sonorities
Cascading down
Each clamouring
For attention

How to reconcile
This incongruity
This ecstasy
In the midst
Of our timidity

Here's a farewell to contend with since
Full fathom five my passion
Having put the wild waters to rout
Will father me no longer

Now I am become
Your refuge
And your troubadour
And will refuse
By this many a child
To be conditioned

For in this abysm of time
Even a margin of loss
Is excruciating

And the mornings I awake to
Are suddenly become
As lonely and as free
As may appear
A distant panoply of mountains
Yet not half so conspicuous

Only high
High above the plains and hours
Only far
Far beyond the explicable

Only in the furthest recesses
Away from
(in the brothel
or the philosopher's tower
where nights are long
and the silence sings
in symbols or in metaphor)

only removed from

can the power contained within
these loins these veins
finally
be released from