David singt vor Saul

King, do you hear how my playing of the strings

throws out distances, through which we move?

stars drift toward us, bewildered,

and at last we fall like a rain,

and it blooms where this rain has fallen.

who now are women and seduce me;

the scent of the maidens you can sense,

and the youths stand, taut,

slender and breathing, at hushed doors.

But drunken, my sounding reels:

Your nights, King, your nights—,

and how they were, those your making weakened,

oh how beautiful all the bodies were.

because I sense it. But on which strings

do I pluck for you their dark moan of pleasure?—

and you who with sheer life

overpower and overshadow me:

come down from your throne and shatter

my harp, which you so exhaust.

through the branches that bore you fruit,

now a depth peers in as if of days

that are coming—, and I scarcely know them.

look at this boy's hand here:

do you believe, King, that it the octaves

of a body cannot yet span?

still I have you in my power.

Look, my firm song is not torn,

and the space grows cold around us both.

My orphaned heart and your tangled one

hang in the clouds of your wrath,

furiously bitten into each other

and clawed into a single one.

King, King, the weight becomes spirit.

If only we hold fast to each other,

you to the young one, King, I to the old one,

we are almost like a constellation, wheeling.