Poetry Translations 1: Heine

On Teleology

God gave us legs and gave us two

So we’d be good at shooting through

Picture what would be our lot

- our personhood fixed to one spot

To be a station-ary chump

All we’d need would be a stump.

God gave us a pair of eyes

To see the world both clear and wise

To take on faith all that we read

A single eye’d be all we’d need

God gave us eyes that numbered two

So we’d be happy checking out

All He created round about

To suit the human point of view.

When checking out life on the street

The wise man with both eyes discerns

The chances uncouth folk we meet

Will tread upon our aching corns

Which have caused us painful passion

Since pointy shoes have been in fashion.

God gave us a pair of hands

To do double good throughout all lands

Not so we’d be doubly grasping

Precious metal ‘ever heaping

Into chests and cupboards too

As certain folk are wont to do

(We could give their names as well

Yet that’s what we dare not tell

Yes, we’d gladly see them hung

Yet it’s from them art’s funding’s wrung,

From these great men, the philanthropes,

The source of our financial hopes.

A German oak’s no tree from which

To fashion gallows for the rich.)

God thought with one nose we’d be right

Because with two we’d have to fight

To get a wine glass near mouth or head

We’d have to snort our wine instead.

God made one mouth the routine

Because two mouths would be unclean

With one mouth the son of earth

Still babbles ceaselessly from birth

With double mouth and double craw

He’d eat and lie a whole lot more

Now when he’s munching on a pastie

He stays beneficially mute

With two mouths things would get nasty

He’d munch while uttering lies to boot.

With two ears we are endowed

By the Lord who thus avowed

His great belief in symmetry

Nor are ours as large as He

Gave our good grey plodding friends

The donkeys with their wide rear ends.

He gave us both ears ‘cause He knew

That Mozart, Gluck and Haydn too

In stereo sound right and true.

If nothing topped the maudlin tone

That sounds from the haemorrhoidal zone

Of the ass-like Meyerbeer

All we’d need would be one ear!

Having wound up thus my speech

To my refined Teutonic blonde

She gave a sigh and did respond

Really, Heinrich, how you squelch

Meaning from th’ Creator’s deeds

As if a lumpen loaf of bread

Could guess thoughts in a baker’s head.

And yet man asks forever why

When he sees things gone awry.

My friend, I heard you state your thesis,

Your admirable exegesis

Of how the Lord with good intent

We human beings from heaven sent

Two ears, two legs, two eyes to roll

While giving us not more than a sole

Exemplar of mouth and nose

But tell me - how could He propose

- Lord God, Creator of All Nature -

To give His favourite two-legged creature

That single scabrous dangling prop

With which a male can never stop

Trying to pass on wretched genes

Or – relieving himself by similar means.

My friend, why not here duplicate

Where duplication’s what we need

To cover functions which indeed

Are most vital for the state

As for folk of every sort -

For all society, in short.

These two functions do contrast

In a way that’s unsurpassed,

Condemnable and largely base -

They frankly shame the human race.

Think of a girl of lively feeling,

Dead for shame and mentally reeling,

When she finds her male ideal

Equipped with something so surreal,

When he who’s set her heart aflutter

Turns out to worship in the gutter.

Psyche shudders when Amor,

The little angel, shy of light,

The morning after in the raw

Turns all her girlish dreams - to shite.

My graceful Hun had said her last

But I said, sweetheart, not so fast,

You of feminine persuasion

Haven’t any thought to spare

For one whole side of the equation

God solved with economic flair:

- how the gadgetry he made

Could serve needs grand and quite clichéd,

- how mothers’ cares and profane lusts

Could both be served by well-formed busts. . .

Simplicity’s itself refined

When every part is well combined,

When what we use when on the can

Assists with the ascent of man,

When on the self-same bagpipes play

The self-same yokels, glum and gay,

When paws and claws both fine and brute

Can strum upon the self-same lute,

When through the self-same vapours, rivets

Each man sings and yawns and pivots:

When one bus does just as well

To transport both of us to Hell.

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Zur Teleologie

Beine hat uns zwei gegeben
Gott der Herr, um fortzustreben,
Wollte nicht, dass an der Scholle
Unsre Menschheit kleben solle.
Um ein Stillstandsknecht zu sein
Gnuegte uns ein einzges Bein.