[Janice D. Soderling]

Due to travel I've come late to this competition. I am not as enthusiastic as others about this translation which is a fatherly meditation about a child taking its first steps. Goes was a clergyman.

ist is present tense, not future. Klein is often, perhaps usually, translated as small , but in this instance I would prefer "short". A child learning to walk takes "short steps" (as compared to "long strides").

Moreover, and this may seem a petty distinction to some, "short" has an undertone of the brevity of life and prepares the reader for the message of death. That said, I find the original poem depressing and grimly old-school Lutheran, but that is my fault, not the poet's.

I don't claim these slant rhymes to be brilliant, but the poem cries out for sométhing more than haphazard rhyming.

Short, my child, your early steps
and short will be your last one
now you have parental help
the rest you walk alone.

I am not expert in German, but I think there is an apostrophe missing in S2L1 Sei's. That would then translate into something like "For (about) a year, child it will be thus, then alas, your steps will be unguarded. Who knows if you will then walk in the light or in darkness?" Again one hears the voice of the clergyman father speaking, this is straight from the Bible.

I think it is vital to the poem that the biblical echo is there.

1 John 1:5-7 King James Version (KJV). (Note, this is not St. John, but 1John.)
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

The third stanza is all paternal advice and optimistic promise: "Walk boldly and walk bravely. The wide world belongs to you. We will, my child, be reunited after your final step."

This is, in my opinion, the essence of the original poem. I don't think it is excellent suggestion, but I haven't any more time to put into it. IMO the translator has not been successful in replicating either the content or the rhyme scheme. Sorry.