Familar poetry

Submitted by gwolf on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 19:02.

I love it when a lack-of-humor and lack-of-appropriateness-originated flamewar causes somebody to point me towards a very nice display of intelligent humor. Specially when it is so close to me, to my roots, to my family and my personal history. FWIW, for several years, while I was a BBS user, I used WereWolf as my nickname. Great thanks to Frank Küster - and, of course, to Christian Morgenstern.

The Werewolf - English translation by Alexander Gross

A Werewolf, troubled by his name,
Left wife and brood one night and came
To a hidden graveyard to enlist
The aid of a long-dead philologist.

"Oh sage, wake up, please don't berate me,"
He howled sadly, "Just conjugate me."
The seer arose a bit unsteady
Yawned twice, wheezed once, and then was ready.

"Well, 'Werewolf' is your plural past,
While 'Waswolf' is singularly cast:
There's 'Amwolf' too, the present tense,
And 'Iswolf,' 'Arewolf' in this same sense."

"I know that--I'm no mental cripple--
The future form and participle
Are what I crave," the beast replied.
The scholar paused--again he tried:

"A 'Will-be-wolf?' It's just too long:
'Shall-be-wolf?' 'Has-been-wolf?' Utterly wrong!
Such words are wounds beyond all suture--
I'm sorry, but you have no future."

The Werewolf knew better--his sons still slept
At home, and homewards now he crept,
Happy, humble, without apology
For such folly of philology.

( categories: )

Interesting to compare the

Submitted by Joe Buck (not verified) on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 19:40.

Interesting to compare the English and German versions. I know a little bit of German, which I picked up because my work used to take me to Germany a lot -- just enough to order in restaurants and ask basic questions (and not understand the answers). But the German has "Werwolf"; "Wer" means "who", and the poet has fun with the cases in German grammar: Wer, Wen, Wem, Wes for "who, whom, to whom, whose".

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