Kristallnacht tr.

[Jeremy Osner]

My attempt at translating Otto's poem message. Was not able to make sense of
every bit of it.

It happens that I believe that something rattles, that something in me is
mistaken. A rustling, not at all loud, sometimes it rattles in secret, seldom
can one see into it directly. One wakens, rubs one's eyes and sees in a mirror
between Brueghel and Bosch nobody, nobody who cares a bit about sirens, since
the all-clear costs only half as much. It reeks of Kristallnacht. In the calm
before the storm -- what is that? Who leaves the city clandestinely. Honoraries
hustle by incognito -- officially they are not glad to be there, when the soul
of the people -- always ready -- rages around the boiling point and screams:
"Heil - Halali" and in boundless lust roars for retribution, shaking in envy in
the Kristallnacht. She troubles everything that is different, those swimming
with the current, as is proper, for her faggots are criminals, aliens are
lepers, who needs, who seduces. Then no cavalry will save them, no Zorro will
take the trouble. At most he will piss a "Z" in the snow and fall over babbling
in laxity: "Well, and? -- Kristallnacht!" In the church with the Franz
Kafka-clock, without hands, just with lines painted on it, a blind man reads
Struwwelpeter to a dove behind thrice-bolted doors. And the guard with the
keyring honestly thinks himself such a genius, because he pulverizes exits and
sells a claustrophobia cure in the Kristallnacht. Meanwhile, at the market place
perhaps, unmasked, today with a real face, collected stones, grind the knife, on
that, the already betrayed, the Lynch-Mob seeks the newest court. And to the
shop, just sketchily anchored -- the galleries stand for a long time now under
steam -- in the port they are waiting for the slave-boat, for the scrap from the
unequal battle from the Kristallnacht. There, where Darwin determines for
everyone, whether one banishes people or tortures them, there, where there is
money behind might, where being strong is the world, mixes up standing at
attention with snuggling. Where one blows hymns on the comb in barbaric lust
after profit, cries "Hosanna" and "Crucify him!", whenever one sees some kind of
advantage in it, it is daily Kristallnacht.