David's World

April 19, 2006

Random act of human kindness / drowned beer hauler

A day ago, after some late-night frantic paper-writing and doing statistical voodoo modelling to meet the last deadlines of scientific conferences taking place this summer, I got my bicycle out of the departmental bike shed here in Edinburgh, only to find that I had been subjected to a random act of human kindness - maybe a not so random one. Thank you, stranger, for the yellow flower on the saddle of my bike! It made me happy!

And somehow, I felt reminded of a poem written by German expressionist Gottfried Benn, a pathologist (1886-1956), who finds a bit of happiness and hope even in a most unlikely, a most uninviting of all places. ("My" flower (right) is not an aster.)

Little Aster

A drowned beer hauler was heaved onto the slab.
Someone had heaved a lavender aster
between his teeth.
As I reached through the chest
under the skin
with a long knife
to cut out the tongue and palate
I must have bumped the flower, for it slid
into the brain lying alongside.
I packed it into the chest cavity
with the sawdust
as we sewed up.
Drink your fill in that vase!
Rest in peace,
little aster!

(Translator unknown, via Brian.)