Half-asleep
Before I was and when my existence
ends, how was, how shall I be? Delusions
and smells do at times with apparitions
keep from start to finish in insistence.
Have I been sleeping? I’ll just go to sleep,
and now me does another sense command;
I am still outside, but it’s in I stand,
And I know it now, I settle in deep.
That thing there calls like it I’ve often found
and this one here looks like a versant tone
and on the walls waxing are hues and sound.
There, my son unborn bides in the ready,
here envisaged my fated bride-to-be,
and what I was then, I am already.
Karl Kraus
Translated by Peter Winslow
Source text
Kraus, K. “Halbschlaf.” Die Fackel. Nos. 474-483 (1918): 81. Print.