Note to Self

Note to self: Take a walk
to go see Hermann Hesse
if I can remember his address uh
We need to talk
about whether I too may speak with lyricism
Apparently the public thinks it exclusively is him
able to feel that life
is perpetual trouble and strife
Will he perhaps allow me
to believe that I, like he,
might feel likewise weary
Tomorrow I think I’ll trot
to this much admired fellow
I’m positive I can bring
him to laughter
at the crowd of followers running after
him and will not
be begrudged the chance to twitter and sing
now and then, soulful, adagio,
that anyone with a famous name
wishes at times he did not have the same

Gentle Rain

The rain fell, so, so gentle,
on the monumental
fame-bewreathed
genius-bequeathed
Great Man
in a manner impossible to convey,
there’s just no way
I can.
He was stand-
ing serious, silent, […] in hand.
His look at his wife was gruesome –
as together they peered through some
rain at the mountain’s eternal snowbank
and she a coffee drank –
beautiful and cold,
enchantingly young and old.
The Great Man stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants
and took a glance
back over the products of his earlier urges.
Around the sanatorium stood birches,
whispering.

translator’s note: The German word for ‘man’ is Mann, and with ‘the Great Man’ Walser was likely referring to Thomas Mann, whose sanatorium novel The Magic Mountain had just been published.

Image © Art Institute of Chicago