Cold, always colder cold sinks into us –Wolf Biermann

In last week’s issue of Kapiti News was an article entitled “Waiata for Jacinda”.  We think this song better suits the current Zeitgeist of NZ.

Wolf Biermann (born 1936) was a singer-songerwriter and bitingly cynical satirist of East Germany’s Communist regime under which he lived until he was expelled from the country in 1976.

This paints a simple, stark picture of what it was like living under Stalinist policies and the steady deprivation of civil liberties.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843) was a German poet and philosopher.

In diesem Lande leben wir wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Haus

Die eigne Sprache, wie sie uns entgegenschlägt, verstehen wir nicht

noch verstehen, was wir sagen die unsere Sprache sprechen

Durch die zugenagelten Fenster dringt nichts

nicht wie gut das ist, wenn draussen regnet

noch des Windes übertriebene Nachricht vom Sturm

Ausgebrannt sind die Öfen der Revolution

früherer Feuer Asche liegt uns auf den Lippen

kälter, immer kältere Kälten sinken in uns

Über uns ist hereingebrochen solcher Friede! solcher Friede, Solcher Friede.

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In this country we live like strangers in our own house

Our own language as we encounter it we do not understand

Yet they understand what we say, they who speak our language

Through the nailed up windows nothing penetrates

not how good it is when it rains outside

still of the wind, exaggerated news of the storm

Burned out are the ovens of the revolution

Once fire, ashes lie on our lips

colder, always colder cold sinks into us

Such peace has broken over us! Such peace