Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NOW I AM FILLED WITH DEATH, by FRANZ WERFEL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NOW I AM FILLED WITH DEATH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once I understood the little fire
Last Line: At my sodom and gomorrah.
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


Once I understood the little fire,
When I was a smith, half blind with smoke of dreams,
Once too I understood the little streams,
When I was a rivergod,
Dipped in the sunny midday mire.

The foreign singer once I understood,
And in the time of leaves—the mad beggar and his woman,—
The hideous lovely English governesses
In their corners like dry briers in the winter wood,
These too I understood,
When I was human.

Now there bides in me
Such a pillar of pain,
A death, rigidity, forgetting and forgot,
I do not know at all what you may be.
The world is salt, ice, brass,
The world is the wife of Lot.
It is a pillar, since it looked back again
At my Sodom and Gomorrah.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net