Lot's Wife!--Not Wife, but Mother. I have learned to curse your motherhood, You pillar of salt accursed. I have cursed motherhood because of you, Accursed, base motherhood! I long for the time to come, when the curse against you will have gone out of my heart. But it has not gone yet. Nevertheless, once, the frogs, the globe-flowers of Bavaria, the glow-worms Gave me sweet lymph against the salt-burns, There is a kindness in the very rain. Therefore, even in the hour of my deepest, pas- sionate malediction I try to remember it is also well between us. That you are with me in the end. That you never look quite back; nine-tenths, ah, more You look round over your shoulder; But never quite back. Nevertheless the curse against you is still in my heart Like a deep, deep burn. The curse against all mothers. All mothers who fortify themselves in motherhood, devastating the vision. They are accursed, and the curse is not taken off It burns within me like a deep, old burn, And oh, I wish it was better. BEUERBERG _ON THE BALCONY_ IN front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow; And between us and it, the thunder; And down below in the green wheat, the labourers Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat. You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals, And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the limber Lightning falls from heaven. Adown the pale-green glacier river floats A dark boat through the gloom--and whither? The thunder roars. But still we have each other! The naked lightnings in the heavens dither And disappear--what have we but each other? The boat has gone. ICKING _FROHNLEICHNAM_ You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care. But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding We have come our ways and met at last Here in this upper room. Here the balcony Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees For the feast of Corpus Christi. Here from the balcony We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river Goes between the pine-woods, Over and beyond to where the many mountains Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning. I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch. You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch Day and make magic in heaven. At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white; At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.