The Field of Mustard
We lie down in a field of mustard,
the yellow blossoms sway before our eyes,
we look at each other,
we do not say anything,
I bend over her,
once I push my tongue between her teeth,
she draws back,
I write my wishes on her face with my breath,
she answers me with her breath,
for a long time we talk with one another
in a language no one speaks ;
next evening I wait for her,
she does not come.
Horst Bienek (1930-1990). Distinguished award-winning German novelist and poet. He was a student of Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble. In 1951, he was arrested on political grounds by the NKVD and sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to twenty-five years of forced labour in the notorious Vorkuta, a gulag. He was released due to an amnesty in 1955. His first novel, Die Zelle (The Cell, 1968, filmed under his own direction in 1972), focuses on a prisoner who, in the isolation of his cell, fights for mental and physical survival in the face of sickness, torture, and an uncertain fate. A first person narrative, it uses stream of consciousness to agonizing effect. The truly excellent English translation is by Ursula Mahlendorf.
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