I try to peel the scotch tape from the windowpane—
so stubborn I can’t claw it off
I stop by the nearest supermarket
for sponges and cleaning gloves
throw in some steel wool
for good measure
Tag: <span>Translation</span>
…
Oh back in my day when I was a youngster
Spring was lovelier than it is today
And that the lovely girls back then were lovelier
Is the only thing that cheers us old men on their way.
He is risen, who lay long asleep,
Risen again from caverns deep.
In the twilight, the towers, huge and unknown,
And with one black hand, he crushes the moon.
Wilhelm Busch confessed later on in life, that some things in his book really did happen. His friendship with the miller’s son Erich Bachmann and their childhood antics together likely inspired the figures of Max and Moritz. A pencil portrait that Bush drew at age 14 shows Bachmann as a young man with thick, round cheeks like those of Max.
Children’s books first appeared in the later 18th century and were strongly moralizing and educational. The books were meant to teach and instruct, not to entertain, and the child figures in those books behaved like miniature adults.
My husband had just finished mowing the yard and when he came back into the house a sweaty mess, I looked at him and smiled, “You look like Moritz,” I said and his face went blank.