1.
I know, dear ladies: because my life is an unruly mess
My hair's coming out in fistfuls
I crash in the gutter when I sleep,
You see me drinking the cheapest Schnapps on the street
While I walk naked into the wind.

2. 
There was a time, ladies, when I was pure.

3. 
I loved a woman who was stronger than me,
As the grass is stronger than the bull: 
It rises again.

4.
She saw that I was uncontrollable, and she loved me.

5.
She didn't ask where the path she was on lead to
Even when it went straight downhill. When she gave me her body
She said: Now I've given you everything. And her flesh became my flesh.

6.
Now she's nowhere to be found, she disappeared like a cloud
After the rain. I let her go and she fell downwards,
For that was her way.

7.
But sometimes at night when you see me drinking
I see her face, pale in the cold breeze but fierce
And staring straight at me, and I bow into the wind.
 
 

Baal's song

A big hipped mama
I'll take her in the grass
Anytime at all. Off with her pants,
Off with her panties.

There's no better feeling, 
That's just the way I am.
 

An ecstatic chick who bites me, 
I'll wash the blood off
On the grass: mouth, bite,
puss, bleeding nose.

I feel clean when I've done it,
That's just the way I am.
 

A woman who loves to get it,
She's full of fire, always 
Wants more. I'll squeeze her hand,
And give her the sign.

You don't have to convince me,
That's just the way I am.
 
 
 

Spring

Spring is back in town -
Boys and girls give each other the eye,
Lovers know where to find the one they're looking for.
The touch of his hand
sends a shiver through her tits.
She just glances at him, and he completely falls apart.
 

Everything looks different
In the spring hills strewn with lovers
High overhead the birds are taking flight,
The air warms up
And the days stretch out, 
The field is lit for hours on end.

Trees and grass get carried away
In the Springtime
Everything's incessantly fertile - 
Forest, meadows and fields.
The earth is begetting new life
without a care in the world.
 
 
 
 

Psalm 11:  Song of the Woman 

1. 
Evenings by the river in the dark heart of the bushes, her face at times comes back to me, face of the woman I loved: My woman who is dead.

2. 
It was many years ago and now I know nothing of her, who once was everything: but everything falls away. 

3. 
And she was in me like a young juniper bush on the Mongolian steppe, concave under pale yellow heavens and overwhelming sadness.

4. 
Our house was a black hut by the river. Horseflies stabbed her white body at will and seven times a day I read the paper or said: Your hair looks like dirt. Or: You have no heart.

5. 
Yet one day while I washed my shirt in the hut, she walked to the gate. She looked back at me and she wanted out.

6.
And he who slapped her until he was tired said, My angel - 

7. 
And he who said, I love you, led her out, looked into the open sky and praised the weather and gave her his hand.

8. 
She was out in the open now, the hut was deserted, he turned the lock on the gate and sank down behind the newspaper.

9. 
I haven't seen her since, and all that remains is the tiny shriek she made when she came back to the gate in the morning and it was already locked.

10. 
Now that the hut is collapsing and my chest is crammed with newspapers, evenings I lie by the river in the dark hart of the bushes and I remember.

11. 
The wind's hair tastes of grass and the waters cry out to God incessantly for silence, and on my tongue there is a bitter taste. 
 
 

Katerina in the Hospital

Wherever I am I've got to have sex
Going without is just not my style
Maturity and morality can kiss my ass
If they like. I work hard, I'm not into self-denial. 

The doctor says my ovaries are shot
And my skin gets a little more yellow each day.
But the doctor's a stiff. I'd fuck a goat 
Before I get off the three-fingered way.
 
 

A Short Course in Love

            Let me let you in on a secret:
            Put a little more care into your squealing.
            I love the soul with the pleasure of the flesh
            And the flesh has to have soulful feeling.

Just being uptight will never make horniness go away.
When I’m hungry satisfaction is due.
I like it when Virtue has an ass 
And the ass should be virtuous too.

Ever since Zeus rode the swan
Many a maiden takes fright.
She suffers him, it turns her on.
He wants to hear the swan sing at night.
 

Translated by James Graham and Barbara Sauermann