Till Lindemann's 'Messer' - "Ich Habe Dich Im Traum Gesehen"

What can I trust in anymore, when my own dreams betray me?

(Poem no. 02 out of 54, located pg. 12 of ‘Messer’, 2010 print.)

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.




"I Have Seen You in a Dream"

I have seen you in a dream
In a clear night, on a hard bed
Ran that race within a nightmare
With feet heavy as if made of lead.
The creature of fear passed by quickly
And I shouted with delusional joy -
Praising all women that beheld your name
And that I would wake no more.
Why is it that the earth gives way
After the finger cramps within mud?
He, then, with his foot
Hits me strongly on the face
Sawing on my exhausted fingers
Kicking me hard on the ribs
Tearing at my twitching lips
Binding me to the rest of life
Threw crumbs of pity for my feast
As the winner he stood over me
And laughed, talking about you
So you, still upon the altar
You combined youth and years
Mating before my very eyes.
I thought that you would wait for me
To wake from that depraved sleep;
But it was better to die in that dream.


Original Meter: Largely tetrameters, but rather erratic and switches without particular pattern between iambic and trochaic terrameters.

Original Rhyme Scheme: AABB, but the first line - which I have used as the title in quote marks as this poem doesn't have a proper title - stands alone and has no rhyming pair.

Comments: The first time I translated this, I interpreted this as a fairy tale. I didn't know enough German to reliably translate a few lines - the final six lines were the key, and also the ones that I couldn't translate.

Now that I know a bit more, I gave it another go. And hoo boy. Look at the final six lines in the first translation. (Italics preserved, as I fessed up back then that I wasn't sure of them.)

'So you, still on the altar
Were agreeing to test your years 
Of youth, before my very eyes
I thought that you would get better
And would awake from that corrupt sleep
And wait for me; alas, but you died in a dream.'

Then look at up the second, and quite likely more accurate, translation. Turned out the persona mourned himself, not the woman. Let this be a lesson to me about fudging translations with poetic words and trying to get away with it.