German Poetry translations into English I

These are modern English translations of poems by the German poets Hannah Arendt, Ingeborg Bachmann, Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim and Heinrich Heine. Heinrich Heine The Seas Have Their Pearls by Heinrich Heine loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch The seas have their pearls, The heavens their stars; But my heart, my heart, My heart has its love! The seas and the sky are immense; Yet far greater still is my heart, And fairer than pearls and stars Are the radiant beams of my love. As for you, tender maiden, Come steal into my great heart; My heart, and the sea, and the heavens Are all melting away with love! Hannah Arendt was a Jewish-German philosopher and Holocaust survivor who also wrote poetry. H.B. for Hermann Broch by Hannah Arendt loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Survival. But how does one live without the dead? Where is the sound of their lost company? Where now, their companionable embraces? We wish they were still with us. We are left with the cry that ripped them away from us. Left with the veil that shrouds their empty gazes. What avails? That we commit ourselves to their memories, and through this commitment, learn to survive. I Love the Earth by Hannah Arendt loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I love the earth like a trip to a foreign land and not otherwise. Even so life spins me on its loom softly into never-before-seen patterns. Until suddenly like the last farewells of a new journey, the great silence breaks the frame. A Lonely Cot by Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (1719-1803) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch A lonely cot is all I own: it stands on grass that’s never mown beside a brook (it’s passing small), near where bright frothing fountains fall. Here a spreading beech lifts up its head and half conceals my humble shed: from winter winds my sole retreat and refuge from the summer’s heat. In the beech’s boughs the nightingale sweetly sings her plaintive tale: so sweetly, passing rustics stray with loitering steps to catch her lay! Sweet blue-eyed maid with hair so fair, my heart's desire! my fondest care! I hurry home—How late the hour! Come share, sweet maid, my sheltering bower! Keywords/Tags: Heinrich Heine, heart, love, heaven, heavens, stars, sea, seas, pearls, sky, dead, death, earth, cry, veil, life, silence