Poetry Translations 2: More Heine

The Wandering Rats

There are two kinds of rat:

The hungry and the fat.

The fat ones stay content at home,

The hungry ones though, they hungrily roam.

They roam for many a mile,

Relentlessly lacking in style,

Straight on along their miserable track,

No wind nor weather can hold them back.

They climb over mountain peaks,

They swim the murkiest lakes;

Many have broken their necks or drowned,

The living pass on without looking around.

Take a look at these louts

With their fearsome ugly snouts;

Heads shaven bare they're at physical peak -

Radical chic - ratty and sleek.

The radical rodent squad

Know nothing of Heaven or God.

Their whelps run unbaptised and free,

Their wives are common property.

The sensuous rats of the fleet

Want no more than to drink and to eat,

No thought while they gulp, slurp and chortle

That our souls were created immortal.

Such wild and savage rats

Have no fear of Hell or of cats;

They think though they haven't a cent to their name

To divide up the world so we all have the same.

The rats are a'roaming here too,

Coming to a suburb near you!

I hear their squeaks, straight on they press,

Their multitude is numberless.

Alas! By now its too late,

They're already at the gate!

The local council and the mayor

Are shaking their heads in brainless despair.

Good citizens ready to arm,

The church bells ring out in alarm.

In peril is something by which we set store,

Our property values, our whole rule of law

No tolling of bells, no pious old pleas,

No majestic parliamentary decrees,

No squadron of cannon, no hundred pounders

Will save your children, your statues of founders,

No help from the verbal poptarts

Of weary rhetorical arts.

You don't catch a rat with a logical trap

So spare me your fine-spun sophistical crap.

To the hungry inside of a rat in a group

Appeals only the logic of dumplings and soup,

Arguments smelling of pig on a spit

With a side-dish of porky political wit.

A taciturn cod stewed in butter for hours

Is what pleases the radical powers

Far better than any Mirabeau

Or all the orations since Cicero.

Auf Deutsch - Die Wanderratten

Es gibt zwei Sorten Ratten:
Die hungrigen und satten.
Die satten bleiben vergn ügt zu Haus,
Die hungrigen aber wandern aus.

Sie wandern viel tausend Meilen,
Ganz ohne Rasten und Weilen,
Gradaus in ihrem grimmigen Lauf,
Nicht Wind noch Wetter hält sie auf.