Four Poems from the Brothers Grimm by Sarah Kortemeier
Beginnings
In older times, when wishes still helped,
youth was the witch.
A small man lived like a king and also like a daughter.
A queen died, and twelve windows stilled her children.
The youngest people worked at naming.
A lonely giant wished to see his own forehead.
A mother baked one huge day.
An evening became sick.
The world was a maiden and was poor,
and money loved the front of us.
Märchen
1.
The youngest daughter was so beautiful that
she began to weep;
she wept and wept as if she could never be comforted.
He answered,
love me
have me
let me
eat
drink
sleep
promise
let me in
open to me
The king noticed.
Perform, said the king.
She opened the door
so everybody might see
her
silken bed.
She picked him up
with rage
and threw him with all her strength
against the wall.
As he fell
they became bride and bridegroom.
She (by her father’s consent)
ceased to be.
He was obliged to wear
three iron bands over his heart
as if something had broken.
2.
Do be quiet, he said. I will manage
something.
Don’t cry, and go to sleep quietly.
She stood by the window and gnawed.
She perceived.
She ran away.
No, she answered, we can go separately,
one after the other.
3.
Should love
be ashes on the path
be uneasy without
knowing why
be the greatest stillness?
Sweetheart, the dream is not ended.
Sweetheart, the dream is not yet ended.
Sweetheart, my dream is not yet ended.
Here is the finger with the ring.
Märchen
A bride,
ashamed of her ugliness,
mocked and laughed at,
put on wedding-clothes.
Dressed herself
in terrible passion.
Her immeasurable ugliness
was rewarded
by having her head cut off.
She remained standing a long time.
Endings
God put joy in the Devil.
The maiden was a house full of fire.
The world stood back a little.
The girl just stood.
The girl was obliged to become God.
The wedding was full of night.
The wicked bride threw children into the world.
The King was never home.
She gave the child three kingdoms.
She threw water on her drowned daughter.
The earth received its days and was still.
Death must never know how much nothing we mastered together.
Sarah Kortemeier holds an MFA from The University of Arizona. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Folio, Fairy Tale Review, Sentence, and Pilgrimage, among others. She serves on the library staff of The University of Arizona Poetry Center.
Photo credit: Hannah Ensor
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