Poetry Blog No 117 Two Clocks (Christian Morgenstern)

TWO CLOCKS

(English versions- Mark Scrivener)

 

      The "nonsense" poems of the German poet Christian Morgenstern, like many of those from Lewis Carroll, would be better described as surreal philosophical jokes. This is evident in these two poems with two different sorts of clocks which play with our conceptions of time- gently suggesting there may be more to the subject than mathematical chronology.

       Palmström and Von Korf are two characters often found in Morgenstern's humorous verse. Von Korf is inclined to come up with strange inventions while Palmström has a strong aesthetic and feeling side that also produces curious effects.

       The mimosa in the second poem is "sensitive mimosa" - Mimosa pudica (from Latin: pudica "shy, bashful or shrinking"; also called sensitive plant, sleepy plant or shy plant) is a creeping annual or perennial herb of the pea family Fabaceae often grown for its curiosity value: the compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched or shaken, defending themselves from harm, and re-open a few minutes later -From Wikipedia

 

 The Persistence of Memory - painting by Salvador Dali

                       THE KORFISH CLOCK

Korf invents a clock where two

pairs of circling hands are found,

one runs forward as clocks do,

but as well one's backward bound.

Pointing two- but also ten;

pointing three- but also nine;

one has but to see it, then

gone is every fear of time.

For with clocks on Korfish time,

with their Janus-parted course,

(that is why their strange design)

time keeps cancelling its force. 

               PALMSTRÖM'S CLOCK

Palmström's clock, another kind,

reacts, mimosa-like, refined

He who asks it will receive.

Often it has gone indeed,

as one really wished it to:

running back or forward through

just an hour or two or three,

in accord, in sympathy.

Though a clock, with its strict times,

it is not to rules inclined:

like the rest, each working part,

but, along with them... a heart.