Phantasus Selection 3

Fully one-third of the poems in Phantasus depict imagined fantastical scenes and behaviours, sometimes juxtaposed for satirical effect with everyday life and attitudes. For some, Holz drew on Classical and Oriental mythology; while others emanate from his own imagination.

SELECTION (3): IMAGINATION AND FANTASY

These five poems indicate Holz’s delightful eye for colourful depiction and humour.

I am the richest man in the world!
My silver yachts
sail on every sea.
Golden mansions glitter through my Japanese forests,
in sky-high Alpine lakes are my castles mirrored,
on a thousand islands my purple hanging gardens.
I hardly notice them.
Their snake-railings of twisted bronze
I just pass by,
on my diamond mines
I let lambs graze.
The sun is shining,
a bird is singing,
I bend down
and pluck a little meadow flower.
And suddenly I know: I am the poorest of beggars!
All my splendour is as nothing
before this dewdrop
sparkling in the sun.

Sea, sea, the sunniest sea, as far as you can see!
Away over the rolling waves, whooping, a thousand tritons.
On their shoulders,
shell upright,
up highl,
a woman.
Her nakedness
in the sun.
Below her,
dripping,
dazzling mother-of-pearl sidewalls lofting ever and again,
fat, sturdy, besotted,
like toads,
seven slithery old mer-fogies.
Those faces! That moaning! And the snorting!
Then,
suddenly,
raging out of the deep,
Neptune.
His beard
flashes.
“Rascals!”
And splishsplash his trident whacks the seven scaredycats on their bald heads.
They roar!
Then, swiftly,
here a few paws still, there a belly –
they’re gone.
The beauty
smiles.
Neptune
makes a bow:
“Madame?”

Every night around my temple grove
seventy bronze cows keep watch.
A thousand bright stone lamps flicker.
On a red throne of lacquer
I sit in the Holy of Holies.
Above me,
through the sandalwood roofbeams,
in a chiselled-out square,
are stars.
I squint.
Were I now to stand,
my ivory shoulders would shatter the roof to pieces,
and the egg-round diamond at my forehead
would crash into the Moon.
Let the fat priests snore on undisturbed.
I shan’t stand up.
I sit with legs tucked under me
and gaze at my navel.
It’s a bleeding ruby
in a bare belly of gold.

Over the peak of Fuji-no-yama
on wings of fire,
the grey dragon Kiyo Matiya soars.
The Moon turns pale,
the stars all go blind.
I grab my bow of ebony wood,
tense the springy bamboo lath
and load a silver arrow.
I take aim.
Nose first
he tumbles into Lake Baikal,
his left hind toe crushes Dhaulagiri.
The Earth greening, its seeds sprouting,
all the women once again give birth!

Up there in the seventh summer heaven, pleasantly naked,
the whole of Olympus is in residence today.
In a lake of amethyst blue
not in the least embarrassed that I’m peeping up at her,
Madam Venus is bathing.
The fat one there, beckoning to the swan, is Juno.
For goodness’ sake!
What an unseemly posture! If her husband could see her now!
He has turned his back on her,
lies content, ruminating in the middle of an emerald meadow,
and lets wanton nymphs
weave laurels, vine leaves and stuffed violets
around his giant horns.

Translations © C. D. Godwin 2019 (Revised May 2020)