Take the last parting kisses, and the blowing,
The greetings, which I transmit still to the bank,
Eh ' your foot separating turns!
By the current waves rapid of the Nachen is already away-pulled,
But the longing always withdraws the water-dark view!
And in such a way the wave carries me away with more unerflehter fast ones.
Oh, already the corridor disappeared, where I blessedly it found!
**time-out** eternal, it Wonnetage!
Hope-empty the complaint resounds around the beautiful homeland,
Where I found its love.
See to weilen as flees the beach past,
And as it pushes me over there,
Pulls with unnennbaren gangs
To land at the hut there in the summerhouse there;
But the current waves hurry far one without rest and rest,
Leading me the weltmeer too!
Oh, before that dark desert, far of everyone heitern coast,
Where no isle to erschauen,
O, how seizes me trembling grey ones!
Nostalgia tears gently to bring,
No song can penetrate from the bank;
Only the storm blows cold therefore by the grey gehobne sea!
The eye longing tails, now so schau '
I can seize no more banks to the asterisks on in that heil'gen far ones!
Oh, with her mild banknotes Nannt ' I it first my;
There perhaps, o troestend luck! There begegn ' I their view.
 

NB: The line-breaks have been reintroduced with some capitals for easier reading but the words are otherwise as they came.

On a positive note, I think I can say the eroticism comes over almost too clearly: a kiss in the first line seems to lead to rather more. I like the way it gives up gradually, introducing more German words as it progresses. It seems to anticipate Tristan und Isolde by turning the song into a hymn to coitus interruptus: all those Nachen away-pulled. The line about "seizing me trembling grey ones" brings tears to my ears. But the suggestion of a monetary transaction at the end causes me to view the passion as quite possibly synthetic from the start. Anyone who has ever been led the Weltmeer will empathize with this touching, yet remote vision. The "grey gehobne sea" is I assume what a Wild Sargasso Sea feels like on the morning after.

All in all then: 5/10. The wetness comes over well and the sense of parting. If some of the details imply more than we really need to know, others are left entirely to the imagination. The way it manages to continue after the Time-out, as if another coin has been put in the meter, with the word "eternal" leaves me breathless with wonder.

James Beswick Whitehead, 2001

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