shadow kisses

Shadow Kisses

english translation

Shadow Kisses

original German poem

“Schattenküsse, Schattenliebe”

Schattenküsse, Schattenliebe,
Schattenleben, wunderbar!
Glaubst du, Närrin, alles bliebe
Unverändert, ewig wahr?

Was wir lieblich fest besessen,
Schwindet hin, wie Träumerein,
Und die Herzen, die vergessen,
Und die Augen schlafen ein.

 

Heinrich Heine

Heinrich was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in either 1797 or 1799. In 1831 he took exile in France, where he often struggled financially despite irregular patronage from a millionaire uncle. With freedom of speech he developed an international reputation for the lyricism, wordplay, irony, and excoriating satire of his poems, and was called the last of the Romantics. In 1841 he married Crescence Eugénie Mirat (“Mathilde”), who cared for him during eight years of paralysis; he wrote from bed until his death in 1856.

 

Terese Coe

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Able Muse, Alaska Quarterly Review, the Cincinnati Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Agenda, the Moth, New Walk, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, the TLS, the Stinging Fly, and many other publications and anthologies. Her poem “More” was heli-dropped across London in the 2012 London Olympics Rain of Poems, and her latest collection of poems, Shot Silk, was published by Kelsay Books.

 

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