Saturday 2 June 2012

Till Lindemann's 'Messer' - 'Ich Will Meer'

Summertime...
And the living is easy 
Fish are jumping
And the cotton is high...

- George Gershwin, 'Summertime' 

Nostalgia lives within all of us.

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 Want the Sea

I want the sea
There I had my best summer
With long rains and large moons
Small animals in black arks
And a girl;
The snail was placed on the pale arms
She was afraid of the leaves falling.
A stray puppy
Beneath the tall trees
Listened to the cries of the branches
And the pain within her breasts

I save the cancer
From the girl's breast
Set it upon my back
And we escape the flow of blood
The sarcoma had lost track of time
But the sea was kind to us
And he knew the stars.

He lay down to die upon a rotten wasteland
And cast a fox upon the sky
This is thanked with the seasonal flowers
The waves carried sand upon his lips
And the sun kept his hands to his face
It was the saddest place on earth.
I crawled onto the dirty sheets of the riverbed
It was the colour of filthy desires
And was cracked like the soles of my grandmother
The thought of the girl did not serve as a pillow
But nevertheless, I slept.

From my eyes fell out white butterflies
In the tall stalks of a daydream
The child of the night brought me a fire
But the dream jumped upon my shoulder
And told me of his dreams
When I ran into the sea
It was the longest summer of my life
I caught fish in puddles
And brought them to the girl
She undressed
And put them with the others
That were not drowned in the water:
I want the sea.

Notes: Lines in italics are ones that I'm less sure of than the rest.

Comments: I wanted to do this one for a long time because of Till's affinity for water - I believed that this might prove to be a nostalgic one, something wistful and melancholy. And I wasn't disappointed at all.

The last line of the first stanza did not actually have 'Brust' (breasts) in it; it was expressed as 'Milchnest', 'milk-nest'. Very poetic for sure, but it didn't quite, well, fit literally with the line so I left that out.

This is the poem that reminds one of the Rammstein song, 'Nebel'. Not the poem titled Nebel, that's got nothing to do with the song... I mean, it talks about an illness and two (lovers?) by a beach...

Sie tragt den Abend in der Brust
Und weiss dass sie verleben muss;

Sie legt den Kopf in seinen Schoss
Und bittet einen letzten Kuss...

She carries the evening in her chest
And knows that she must wither away;
She lays her head in his lap
And asks for a last kiss
...

1 comment:

  1. Man, that was beautiful. I wish I had the slightest idea of what the hell he's talking about. :(

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