from Die Bettlerschale (1956)
Earth, if you had two lips
Earth, if you had two lips
and a tongue and a friendly hour,
would you want to talk with me?
Even now, as I kick
my little stump of understanding angrily beneath the snowflakes?
Earth, would you laugh?
I have bragged about your friendship
and told how I often live among the roots
and talk with the stones about the weather
and am permitted to discuss your blood.
Telling lies—you know—was like a sickness that
one gets before great plagues,
and my heart believed every word I said.
Now my heart is contagious and cries out for you.
It doesn’t want to die young. It won’t tell anyone else
what it has in mind, what it tortures itself with,
or whom it wants to bless in the end.
Earth, take my tongue.
Earth, please—and my lips!
Talk beneath the snowflakes
about warm and lasting love.
Christine Lavant (1915-1973) grew up in poverty in rural Austria and suffered lifelong physical and mental health struggles. Her poems are marked by the tension between her Catholic faith and her sometimes explosive anger toward God. She was a two-time winner of the Georg Trakl Prize, among other prestigious Austrian literary honors.
Greg Sevik is a poet, translator, and English professor at the Community College of Baltimore County. He was co-winner of the 2025 Pratt Poetry Contest, sponsored by Little Patuxent Review. His poems and translations have been published or are forthcoming in Avalon Literary Review, El Portal, Inventory, Iron Horse, Rattle, SoFloPoJo, Vagabond City, and elsewhere. His essays have appeared in such publications as the Emily Dickinson Journal and Style. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature from Binghamton University (SUNY) and served as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in Vreden, Germany. He lives in Baltimore, where he is working on his first book.
