Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOON SONG OF A GIRL (FOR MY SISTER HANNA), by FRANZ WERFEL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOON SONG OF A GIRL (FOR MY SISTER HANNA), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Through hours of a brittle transparence
Last Line: Each helpless, shivering world.


Through hours of a brittle transparence,
I lie, with hair loosed to the night.
The moon with her lingering laughter
Spills slowly her unholy light.

And now as the death-bearing brightness
Is feeling my brow and my eyes,
I melt, I become as a billow,
Whose crest is sucked back in its rise.

My mother is breathing there near me,
And father is restless in sleep.
While I, over all my beloved,
My terror-filled watch must keep.

Through rooms that are rank, archangels
Are stirring: appalling, divine.
I hear an unquieted crying:
A child, and it is not mine.

The nightlamp by thousands of bedsides
Of anguish, the moon appears.
I long to silence the sobbing,
But these are my own weak tears.

The things in the room are abandoned,
The clothes, and the chair, and the chest....
I fumble to clutch at distance,
To be but a hand bearing rest!

The chilled ones should be my companions,
The freezing, my arms would immure!
I feel that the rich and the many
Are children to me, and so poor!

For all I must care, since all suffer,
My sleep is glassy, it shakes....
I hear how each one in the morning
Breathes painfully as he awakes.

The broken trees sway in the window,
Wide skies to the winds are unfurled.
I cover with my own blanket
Each helpless, shivering world.





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