Cat at at a swimming pool - an anomaly.
This morning single threads of the finest cobweb silk bar my way in. They catch the sun for only part of their length so that disconnected silver trails seem to shine and sway in the air .
In the bar of The Tunbridge Wells Bar and Grill I attempt to quote in my vestigial German Heinrich Heine's poem Die Lorelei. A woman sitting beside me attempts to fill in the missing words. And then performs a Google search on her Blackberry whereupon the whole poem appears on the small screen. We both recall that our first acquaintance with the poem was in the school textbook Heute Abend.
2 comments:
Ich weiss nicht...
any more words to Die Lorelei
(Ich habe nicht any umlauts or that double 's' thing on my keyboard!)
Embedded in my very being. This without reference to Google:
Die schõnste Jungfrau sitzet,
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldenes Geschmeiden blitzet,
Sie kammt sein goldenes Haar.
Si kammt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Lied dabei
Dass hat eine wundersame
Gewaltige Melodie.
Der Fischer im kleine Schiffe
Erzeugt sich mit wildem (?) Weh
Er sieht nicht den Felsenriffe,
Er sieht nur hinauf in die Hoh.
Ich glaube die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Fischer und Kahn
Und hat ich mit diese Singe,
Die Lorelei getan.
One of the few things taught at Bradford Grammar School that stuck. It became embedded in 1954 as a result of my having a beer at an inn on the Rhine within spitting distance of the Lorelei Rock. Elsewhere in the inn a wedding reception was proceeding; someone noticing me and my friend invited us to join the festivities. As a result I have always had a warm sentimental spot inside for Germans, even though I subsequently became Francophile.
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