Adventure of the Work

What lightly into my lap fell,

so heavily must I acquire,

fearful lest the Word expire.

O that this lot me befell!

At first it was in my hand,

then it sought to flee,

hence must I learn to seek;

I cannot understand.

The Word here is a scale

to set the mind at rights.

At once all Hell alights.

The Word to me is miracle.

How it opens the eyelids

that were else shut tight.

Here is nought but affright.

Now the Word is silence.

If I befool it, it fools me.

To me it binds itself,

I’ve set it free since then

from many a thing that’s noisy.

What happened to me, has me,

that I shall never have,

on swaying earth I stand

and dully down sit me.

I choose if there be doubt

of two ways just the pair.

I roast myself with care,

am in the Devil’s mouth.

A fearless sort of critic

I will allow me nought,

as from the purest thought

Eagle and Head to mimic.

If Head upon the Word came,

the Eagle drops down struck—

so doubt remains unstuck,

know not I, am away.

Who is kin with Spirit

in pictures and in plans

takes World with Word in’s hands—

by Heaven is no tame wit!

In times when language palters

to live in sentence structure:

this last good fortune falters

with punctuation puncture.

How it moves too rashly,

how wrangles with the Word—

a line makes thinking blurred

and into chaos leads me.

Though semicolons call,

the comma not to trust:

a colon lets you just

look on an endless fall!

Exclamation looms

as in early days.

Before it question prays:

Has it softer dooms?

How I never risk it,

and how I always wend,

a work is not to end—

a question’s at the exit.

Before my heart despair

of reaching any exit,

I set a sign in secret—

still the question’s there.

It lights up evermore

the bolt, which tore me up.

My own better wisdom

wants the Paraclete’s answer.

With a fear-hot face

I stop before each turn,

and all at once adjourn

through a printing press.

How fair it has become,

all blissful was the way.

Secret and sweet it saw day,

now folks will lap it up.

O joy in hidden Word troves

of thought still unreleased,

self-given and refused—

what round the corner goes?

Not yet seen, I see it.

Kinship before the world,

before I formed it, stood,

and now I borrow from it.

Blissfulness found the gawker

in sights by tens of thousands.

Out of dayworn sounds

he releases the metaphor.

In the ebb and flow

of fair figures of speech

by forbidden paths to reach

posthumous love glow.

In world-pitying hate

Thing and Spirit cross

to language whore-tossed

chiastic embrace.

The Word drifts on the wind

and plays with shapes of nothing.

In wordplay are hidden

thoughts, that now me find.

If so far on I play,

before such bold putter

posterity will shudder.

Because it all was wordplay.

From renewal endless

at first sight to arrive,

escape I only, gyved

in newfound adventures.

By fetters of intonation

restrained from free pieces,

the remove’s experienced

upon a desk armchair.

What lightly into my lap fell,

so heavily must I acquire,

fearful lest the Word expire.

O that this lot me befell!

Karl Kraus