Till Lindemann's 'Messer' - 'Da Saß Es'

Everyone from Tumblr, thank you muchly for the traffic. :3

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.



There It Sat

A beast in cold sand
All dead; death itself lay dying
The moon in mid-death wished to see the water
Kill themselves a little
The children of Neptune cook
Cried the nightlight
The moon descended; it held its mouth and nose
Its face was truly hideous
To see

There it sat
The beast with white back
It guarded the water
Got hairs and a view
The sand was old
It was permitted to lie with him
Awake and watchful
Waited for the blink of the lighthouse
Built gardens
Sometimes it gave children's fingers
They hung by the tails of drowned cats
And did not want to be stolen
They were bound to the woods to scream in paper
And they wrote on
For a half-sister

Comments: I wish I could offer a better translation than this, seeing as I am so close to finishing the collection as it is ;_; but this is one of the inherently confusing and vaguely incomprehensible poems by Till, and it's what it is.

The 'half-sister' part throws me off some, I admit. Even moreso than everything else. 'Vieh' was translated as 'beast', but it more commonly means 'livestock' or 'cattle'.