Passion Flowers
They stand on the table,
Creeping around from out of a green vase,
Twisting, rambling, over here, over there,
Pale and wan, like consumptive lips.
Passion flowers!
Like a dying, torturous last gasp,
Like the scream of a drowning boy,
Passion flowers!
And they tremble and perfume,
Painfully and abusively,
Weak and diseased, pathetically coughing,
They tremble and look at me in hesitation,
Half complaining in pain and half vengefully,
Like the sundering eyes of the gallows birds!
—Oh, I know you, pretend flower,
Know you and your entire proud relatives,
I know Genoveva, and poor Heinrich,
Know the suffering fool on the cross
And all the chosen knights
With pale cheeks and gaping maws!
Know all of you! And hate all of you!
—hello, pale flower, voluptuously soft,
Just waft your Nazarene poison here:
I am immune and I grab you
And crinkle and tear tendrils and blossoms,
And with a healthy curse
Throw everything
Out through the window,
Into the dirty, stinking street!
—Passion flowers!
-Hanns Heinz Ewers
translated by Joe Bandel
Anarchistbanjo's World 
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