- Remember me when I am dead -

- Remember me when I am dead -

40X60cm - 1999

D - Ich male keine abstrakten Bilder, obwohl manch einer es irrtürmlicherweise anders sieht. Diese Arbeit ist entstanden, nachdem ich
das Gedicht "Simplify Me When I'm Dead" von Keith Douglas gelesen hatte und ziemlich beeindruckt war. - Acryl-Collage

E - I don't paint abstract pictures, though some people have wrong conclusions about it. I painted this picture after
having been mightily impressed by Keith Douglas' poem "Simplify Me When I'm Dead" - acrylic collage

R - Ya ne risuyu abstraktnyh kartin, hotya inogda tak kazhetsya. Eta rabota byla sosdana pod
vpetchatleniyem ot poemy "Simplify Me When I'm Dead" (Keith Douglas) - akrilovyj kollazh

SIMPLIFY ME WHEN I'M DEAD

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.

As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
"He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.

Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.

Keith Douglas, 1943