Franz Werfel poems
Franz Werfel(10 September 1890 - 26 August 1945 / Prague)
The Faithful One
- by Franz Werfel 20
So many play with you,You play with the many,
But you never see me
There in the background,
By you around the clock
With my frozen-up mouth
And my iron-hard face.
Those you gladly amuse,
They make things work smoothly,
They don't get in my way.
There's always someone new,
And there's no one I shun,
For I'm the faithful one,
And you I can bet on.
Once you become old hat,
Passé, of no interest,
And no one's around you,
Then I'll turn to you,
To earn and to end,
And in my firm hands
I'll carry you over my dark sea.
The Snowfall
- by Franz Werfel 20
Oh the slow fall of snow,Its unending blanketing swirl!
Yet my mind's eye was giving shape
To what couldn't be kept hidden,
That in the white drifts each fleck
Is known, weighed, counted.
Oh you spinning dancing flakes,
Your tiny souls and personalities
Withstand gravity, weightlessness, wind,
In your coming and going
I see your destinies glide down,
Which you begin, fulfill, begin . . .
This one falls soft and like wool,
The next is crystal and tenacious,
The third's a clenched fist of struggle.
Yet their white realm disperses by morning,
Thus one doesn't die from the rest,
And they dissolve into the purest drop shapes.
Oh the world's slow falling snow,
That race's dense, blanketing swirl!
It perishes and not one fate melts alone.
We melt, but we are left behind
When death, the way spring wind thaws, overtakes
Us drops and comes together home in the womb.