TO THE DOCTOR . . . by Friederike Mayröcker, translated by Donna Stonecipher

to the doctor due

to Aeschylus, hemorrhage

of poesie &c.

“do you know the land, where the lemon-trees bloom, in the darkling leaves, the gold oranges loom” Goethe …….. title for my next book “lyrics” or “lyrix,” a very (PARNASSIAN) woman, you know, she didn’t dare receive visitors in Father’s presence, ach graceful epigraph in the Azure n’est-ce pas, the storm-foot, that is, the foot of the little Christmas tree, and at its tip 1 piece of notepaper with the name Cecilia on it, I found my way home I was in the forest I saw a rainbow, which brings luck. I keep running after objects that constantly disappear, what did I mean, asked Erika T., when I said “I forgot something on the toilet,” I answered that those were magical words for her edification etc., I had become disoriented …….. Burberry’s heartlet, I wore old sneakers or Wellingtons UNDER THE TRUMPET TREE and a tattered beige Burberry, I was deliriously happy = in the morning the impression of your head on my pillow (while the high summer trilled, you drilled Greek verbs into me, you ruffled the herringbone of my brow, upriver we flew with summer’s filaments, I mean Luna and branchlet)

hey! Mustache hey! Fingerlets : fallen asleep (Franz Liszt on the GRAMO) 1 pattering through deciduous forest, snowbell-tussock, your form : 1 wreathlet Leidenfrost’s body …….. graciously I plan to do this and that, then forget about all of it, ravishing, the giant bouquet of purple irises, I mean purple swords, your cheeks

                                    and it turned my heart inside out,”

25.8.14

Author and Translator Bios

Friederike Mayröcker was born in Vienna in 1924 and died there in 2021. The author of numerous books of poetry, she is widely considered one of the most important European poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Starting in 1956, she published over 80 works, including poetry, prose, radio plays, and children’s books. Her work was honored with many prizes, including the most prestigious prizes in the German-language sphere, among them the Georg Büchner Prize and the Peter Huchel Prize; she was long considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Her work has been translated into dozens of languages. 

Donna Stonecipher is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Ruins of Nostalgia, which was listed as a best book of 2023 by NPR, and one book of prose, Prose Poetry and the City. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages. She is translating Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker’s trilogy études, cahier, and fleurs, a project for which she received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Berlin.

© Friederike Mayröcker. Translation © by Donna Stonecipher. All rights reserved.

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