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Peter Huchel Poems

A collection of select Peter Huchel famous poems that were written by Peter Huchel or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.

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by Huchel, Peter
 THE WARMTH of life is quenched with bitter frost;
Upon the lonely road a child limps by
Skirting the frozen pools: our way is lost:
 Our hearts sink utterly.


But from the snow-patched moorland chill and drear,
Lifting our eyes beyond the spirëd height,
With white-fire lips apart the dawn breathes clear
 Its soundless hymn of light.


Out of the vast the voice of one...Read more of this...



by Huchel, Peter
 Between two nights
the brief day.
The farm is there.
And in the thicket, a snare
the hunter set for us.

Noon’s desert.
It still warms the stone.
Chirping in the wind,
buzz of a guitar
down the hillside.

The slow match
of withered foliage
glows against the wall.
Salt-white air.
Fall’s arrowheads,
the crane’s migration.

In bright tree limbs
the tolling hour has faded.
Upon their clockwork
spiders lay
the veils of dead brides....Read more of this...

by Huchel, Peter
 Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name....Read more of this...

by Huchel, Peter
 Do not look for the stones
in water above the mud,
the boat is gone.
No longer with nets and baskets
the river is dotted.
The sun wick,
the marsh marigold flickered out in rain.

Only the willow still bears witness,
in its roots
the secrets of tramps lie hidden,
their paltry treasures,
a rusty fishhook,
a bottle full of sand,
a tine with no bottom,
in which to preserve
conversations long forgotten.

On the...Read more of this...

by Huchel, Peter
 For Michael Hamburger

Barn owl
daughter of snow,
subject to the night wind,

yet taking root
with her talons
in the rotten scab of walls,

beak face
with round eyes,
heart-rigid mask
of feathers a white fire
that touches neither time nor space.

Coldly the wind blows
against the old homestead,
in the yard pale folk,
sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,

in the pots death,
in the pitchers poison,
the last will nailed to a post.

The...Read more of this...



by Huchel, Peter
 The forest bitter, spiky,
no shore breeze, no foothills,
the grass grows matted, death will come
with horses' hooves, endlessly
over the steppes' mounds, we went back,
searching the sky for the fort
that could not be razed.

The villages hostile,
the cottages cleared out in haste,
smoked skin on the attic beams,
snare netting, bone amulets.
All over the country an evil reverence,
animals' heads in the mist, divination
by willow...Read more of this...


Book: Shattered Sighs