"The nets of mutability"

[Andrew Shields]

I’m puzzled by one of the decisions Peter Filkins made in his Bachmann translation. The third line in the German is a noun, “Schatten”, but he translates it as if it were a verb, “schatten”.

There aren’t any verbs in Bachmann’s poem:

Schatten Rosen Schatten

Unter einem fremden Himmel

Schatten Rosen

Schatten

auf einer fremden Erde

zwischen Rosen und Schatten

in einem fremden Wasser

mein Schatten