Heiner Müller's poem "Missouri 1951" ("Gedichte", Alexander Verlag, 1992) briefly sketches the Great Flood of 1951, a catastrophe that left over half a million people displaced and seventeen dead. When I read the poem recently, I realized I had never heard of that flood before, and it struck me how an East German Communist's poem taught me something about the history of my own homeland, the United States. Many Wikipedia pages on historical events include a section on literary or cultural representations of those events, but the Great Flood of 1951 page has no such section. But surely a few other literary or cinematic works, besides Müller's poem, refer to it. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 January 2025)
Missouri 1951
Es wurde von den Staaten
Dem Staudamm Geld verwehrt.
Weil sie nichts gegen ihn taten
Hat sich der Fluß beschwert.
Er ist aufgestanden
Ihm schien der Damm zu alt.
Die Stadtbewohner fanden
Das Wasser kalt.
Die abgehauenen Wälder wachsen
Unter der Erde fort.
Dresden ein Brandfleck in Sachsen
Die Toten haben das letzte Wort.
No comments:
Post a Comment