Mom's Poetry

My mother, Angela Brill Thaler was something of a closet poet. I think she considered poetry writing somehow indecent, too personal to be proper. As a young woman in Vienna, and later in Switzerland, she belonged to a musical group. She played the accordion, wrote rhyming verses for weddings and so forth. But until late in her life, most of her serious poetry was written in private, and destroyed.

Thankfully, one poem she did not destroy. It was a poem written for me soon after my birth. I was her second daughter, born in January of 1946, when, finally, the war was truly over, and she could almost dare to hope. Almost, but not quite. She wrote the poem in German, and 24 years later, when my own daughter was born, she translated it into English as a gift for me. Click on the link to your right, Looking at my Baby, to read, or listen to my reading of, this beautiful poem.

And, I share with you here, several poems she wrote and was willing to share in the last couple of years of her life, when she was living in her own little 11th floor apartment overlooking the foothills of the rockies at Golden West Senior Residence, Boulder, Colorado:

To My Children
Who Give Me Continuity!--

by Angela Thaler

This is the course of all eternity:
to heavy plowing
not to happy harvest
is our time enough.
And if no other takes the road I took
The seedling withers
In forgotten field.
And like a wispy cloud
Up in the sky
So disappears an unimportant “I.”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••


The Smorgasbord Of Life

by Angela Thaler

Offers hot and cold, sweet and sour.
I ate my portion with relish—
And some indigestion.

We remember the past
With joy and sorrow—
We are alive today.
Never mind the tomorrow!
************************************
Untitled


by Angela Thaler

On the highway stream to Denver
Cars and cars, a steady flow.
Silently the mountains wonder:
Where did all the people go?

February 1999
****************************************************

Vorsicht Ist Die Mutter Der Weisheit
by Angela Thaler

“Caution is the mother of Wisdom”
A German proverb goes.
But who is the father of Wisdom?
Nobody knows!
It therefore is an obvious fact
That Mother Caution did neglect
Once or twice
Her own advice!

************************************************

At Golden West
by Angela Thaler

In my penthouse nest
At Golden West
The past and the present
Merge in happy harmony.
Birds fly by
Framed by sky and mountains.
I look down at the matchbox-cars
And the miniature people.
I am giant Gulliver watching
The Lilliputes!
The elevator brings me down
To their level
And I am one of them.

1999
****************************************************

Cogito Ergo Sum(I Think
Therefore I Am)
by Angela Thaler

My heart still beats.
My brain still thinks.
But my skin is wrinkled
And my hair is white.
If I don’t look in the mirror
I’m all right!

1999
****************************************************
A Little Fairy Tale
by Martha Brill and given to daughter Angelika on her thirteenth Birthday (Translated by Angela Brill Thaler)


A mother went to the woods by herself
And under a thorn bush found an elf.
“Don’t be frightened, little man!
You are free now—run if you can!”

“Dear Lady, three wishes I gratefully convey:
Speak up before I run away!”

The mother did not hesitate:
“That my child’s life be happy & great—
that her spirit remain pure & kind…

“Stop! You wasted two wishes.
Let the third be for yourself!” said the elf.

The mother pondered hard & long
And finally she did respond:

“For me, only one thing you can grant:
Please let my child become my friend!”

And This, my favorite of all her poems, was written for me, Joan, when I was newly born in January 1946



My lovely child, we watch you sleep,
I seek his hand, who gave your seed ...
You manifest of feverish lust in May,
we made a choice -- you have to pay.
Now here you are, beginning of a fate.
I ponder of its purpose,
I'm afraid.
So many bloods are in your stream,
so many flames to build the fuzzy dream
that glimmers dimly in your sense:
new element of countless elements.
What we admitted or suppressed,
the dark, the ugly, and the best
it all is you
or could be you.
The world we built in love and trust
is now in ruins, death and dust.
What if some day in desperation
you ask us justify creation?
The foolish, burning optimist
left you a world
which does not exist.
A judge you are to us, my pet.
You smile in dream ... don't know it yet.
A healer too of squabbling fuss,
because where we are two
you are the both of us.
And some day
I will smile within your face
and cry within your eyes.
And on your feet I'll walk upon my grave
and in your warmth I'll press
my body to your closest friend
to take the glorious gift of joy and dread:
a living child like you ... now sleep my pet ...