Till Lindemann's 'Messer' - "So Hat Das Kind In Not Gelogen"

Words and language can and have failed us all.

Disclaimer: Poem copyrighted to Till Lindemann. This post does not include photos/illustrations of said poem from 'Messer'. The original German text is also not included. This is only a interpretive translation and accuracy is not guaranteed.



So The Child In Distress Had Lied

So the child in distress had lied
That she had broken her knee to pieces
The tongue, pulled out by greed
Wants to have its pick of taste
Pulled out from the feeding-hole
And curled around the back floor
The muscle of words was hidden;
With skin the eighth body became covered

The little girl on her crutches
Wearing a knot on her back
Blossoms pink like an almond tree
A foam of syllables rises from the skin
There they must torture the root of language
The voice of the bands are stolen
So betraying the art of words;
The child has lied no more.
She will now look at her pale hands
And strangle herself - and be finished.

Notes: The whole poem is full of compound words that Till clearly felt like making up for the hell of it and thus I will have the majority of it in italics.

Comments: Probably about the curse of lying and the power of words. I would write a more concise comment if I could understand what the hell this was about. It's not so cryptic as Immunschwache Sehr Positiv or Big In Japan, admittedly, and there is a kind of story that is much clearer in meaning than those two poems. I think the translation kills it more than the actual content of the poem, really. This is one of the hardest poems by Till I've had the honour (?) of translating. Six months' German is not quite enough for this one. One day I'll have another go at it.