Poem

Dan Pagis

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Original language

SUDDEN HEART

Sudden heart, tightrope walker with no rope
and no rest, how long will it be?
Down in the lighted arena the horses shake their heads
over you, their bright plumes waving goodbye.
And already the mournful tuba
and that sentimental codger, the double bass,
lament you in a syncopated rhythm.
Far down below,
to meet your fall, stretches
the drum.

But this blue void,
this free fall,
this piercing joy

© Translation: 1989, Stephen Mitchell
From: Variable Directions
Publisher: North Point, San Francisco, 1989

SUDDEN HEART

© 1991, Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the Bialik Institute
From: Kol Hashirim Dan Pagis
Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the Bialik Institute, Tel Aviv & Jerusalem

Dan Pagis

Dan Pagis

(Romania, 1930 - 1986)

Dan Pagis was born into a German-speaking family in Radauti, Bukovina in Romania (now the Ukraine), in what was once a multi-cultural part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also the birthplace of poet Paul Celan and Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, among other well-known Jewish writers. Critic Robert Alter has said that Pagis “would probably have never known Hebrew, never have had any serious c...

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MISTAKES

SUDDEN HEART

FURS

EIN LEBEN

THE GRAND DUKE OF NEW YORK

THE LAST ONES

WRITTEN IN PENCIL IN THE SEALED RAILWAY-CAR

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SUDDEN HEART

Sudden heart, tightrope walker with no rope
and no rest, how long will it be?
Down in the lighted arena the horses shake their heads
over you, their bright plumes waving goodbye.
And already the mournful tuba
and that sentimental codger, the double bass,
lament you in a syncopated rhythm.
Far down below,
to meet your fall, stretches
the drum.

But this blue void,
this free fall,
this piercing joy

© 1989, Stephen Mitchell
From: Variable Directions
Publisher: 1989, North Point, San Francisco

SUDDEN HEART

Sudden heart, tightrope walker with no rope
and no rest, how long will it be?
Down in the lighted arena the horses shake their heads
over you, their bright plumes waving goodbye.
And already the mournful tuba
and that sentimental codger, the double bass,
lament you in a syncopated rhythm.
Far down below,
to meet your fall, stretches
the drum.

But this blue void,
this free fall,
this piercing joy

© 1989, Stephen Mitchell
From: Variable Directions
Publisher: 1989, North Point, San Francisco

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