Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001

Surrounded by German

mothers and conscript

sons homeward on the

Bundesbahn: the leaning

tower by Landsberg

the murder at Hotel Hahn

the Buchloe cheese factory

the lunatics of Kauf beuren

the abbey school windows

the abyss of childhood

And in the dark

lifting her skirts

Saint Elizabeth

stepping daintily

over glowing ploughshares

Precisely undulated fields

little globular trees

sculpted and dark green

pedantically aligned

rows of maize

Thereabove to the west

God’s pleasure

pink candyfloss

from the recent funfair

Mumbling the enigma of their

crosswords pensioners sit

on the express, limbs benumbed

in the quicksilver of their angst

Already the shadows are smoking

in the valley of Jehoshaphat

Here comes the railwayman

his lamp bouncing on his bib

The poster in the village shop

recalls the yellowed terror

of the Colorado beetle

In the backroom behind her

the shopkeeper’s children sit glued

to the nation’s wooden eye

Windfalls lie leaden in the garden

and blue in the crayfish-stream

flow the suds from the washing machine

The Moor on the hill

peeps from an American tank

among the dying spruces

In the afternoon

my crazy grandfather

torches the fields

My last aspirin

dissolves gently

in a glass

As the pain subsides

I hear once more

the call of the distant posthorn

White fields

in winter sometimes

strewn with ash

The high shoulders of the hill

stunted conifers

juniper shrubs

rock tombs

one-eyed sheep

Overtaken by ruin

a Wilhelmine artisan mill

reflects the breadlessness

of the passing trains

Deposited between layers

lie the winged

vertebrates

of prehistory

Glacial in the early morning

the train station at Bamberg

a Reichspost stamp

overprinted for hyperinflation

Hindenburg’s gray-green millions

history’s null ouvert

penny panic

in the poor souls of commuters

Beyond the tracks

moored in the half light

the brickwork brewery

a German airship

At the gondola window

Saint Dionysius

a lonely passenger

with his head under his arm

Falling asleep

on the sofa

I hear from a distance

geese on the radio

whetting their beaks

to pass the verdict

The mildew grows

in the garden paralysis

spreads

a long succession

of minute shocks

I feel the blood

at the roots

of my teeth

As I awake

sudden cardiac

death waves

from the other side

of the abyss

A snip of the scissors

a thimble

a needle’s eye

A place of pilgrimage

a memory stone

a mountain moved

A club moss

and a cube of ice

tinted with a jot

of Berlin blue

Nine thousand nine hundred

and ninety-nine years

Zarvan murmured

to get a son

And now his descendants

are flogging off

the houses of heaven

and the five coasts of the earth

With his sea-goat ready

for departure the mythologist

beholds once again

the shattered world egg

Build fire and read

the future in smoke

Carry out ash and

scatter over head

Be sure

not to look back

Attempt

the art of metamorphosis

Paint face

with cinnabar

As a sign

of grief

Nothing can be inferred

from the forecasts

Tree frogs

are ignoring their ladders

Changeable weather tests the patience

of the rheumatic soul

The slightest gust makes it flutter

first this way then that

Meanwhile Propertius

waits faithfully in his folding boat

One oar in the water

the other skimming the sand at the edge

His personal effects

are ready to leave

Entered

well in advance

the calligraphic endorsement

an analphabetic cipher

valid for a single journey

Pictures sent

en route greetings

from Bohemian Switzerland

and a group photo

in front of the High Tatras

Didn’t you

have your

photograph taken

in Franzensbad too

The cucumbers

lurk in their greenhouses

The customs official

borrows my evening paper

A wet hand

casts no shadow

Kaiser Willem

is still smoking his cigars

No sign

of the reclaimed land

like Kafka’s essay

on Goethe’s abominable

nature

Beethoven’s room

is tidy now

The pictures straightened

the curtains washed

and week for week the floors

polished anew

But the chair

for the grand

has been taken away

He still comes in at night sometimes

and composes something

standing up

The proviso is

it be audible only

with an ear-trumpet

Such desolation

in Harwich Harbor

when I am here

it always seems to me

as if we were

in the throes of a silent war

The hollow barges

all that bulky

worn-out iron

the oil-green water

and the ever stiller

county of Essex

round about

The poor travelers

with their woe-begone

faces oppressed

hapless folk

standing here waiting

on the Red Sea shore

Nobody tells them

where the ferries are heading for

tonight

A green zone

for field glasses

and camouflaged

ornithologists

Beyond it the bay

its sweep broader

than the furthest

horizon

The Home Guard

waited here

for the sea lion

to appear

When the monster didn’t

show the marram

was permitted to reoccupy

the fortified strip

But Uncle Toby

doesn’t entirely

trust the peace

Stuffing his pillow

with sand he wishes

the deluge would begin

Sailing backwards

as a passenger with

banished time

A Louisianian

landscape populated

by invisible windmillers

Where the Egyptian

in his painted boat

sails between fields

In early November 1980

walking across

the Bridge of Peace I almost

went out of my mind

In Man it is

the Quadruped

in Woman the Amphibian

who has the upper Hand

Is Carl Löwe’s

heart

really

immured

in a column

in the Church of St. James

in Stettin?

Aristotle did not

apprehend at all

the word he found

in Archytas

Feelings my friend

wrote Schumann

are stars which guide us

only when the sky is clear

but reason is a

magnetic needle

driving our ship on

till it shatters on the rocks

It was when my palsied

finger stopped me playing

the piano that calamity

came upon me

If you knew every cranny

of my heart

you would yet be ignorant

of the pain my happy

memories bring

Carnaval time for the children

with friends dressed up

as Ormuzd and Ariman

fleecy clouds of gold

melting in the pure ether

For years now I’ve had

this same whistling

sound in my ears

and it troubles me greatly

Walking by the Rhine

I know I shall steer

for the North I have yearned for

though it be colder there

even than the ice on

geometry’s intersecting lines

Hell Valley Wind on My Nerves

In the cathedral square

of a town he left

many years ago

the emigrant sits

reading the secret history

of Judge Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber

Events of war within

a life cracks

across the Order of the World

spreading from Cassiopeia

a diffuse pain reaching into

the upturned leaves on the trees

The black holes

of ghosts flying about

in the sky above

conceal as I know

li più reconditi principii

della naturale filosofia

Come lacklustre times, you

in the midst of beauty

of obscenity my nights

will help you remember

a pale block of ice

slowly melting

The judge speaks

I am the stony guest

come from afar

and I think I am dead

Open these pages, he says,

and step smartly

into hell

Late last night

I was standing in the garden

when a space ship

sparkling with lights

passed incredibly

slowly

over our roof

What can you do

but watch the ocean giant

pull away beyond the trees

and head for another galaxy

In sixty-nine

on Pwllheli beach

in Wales I saw a small

glimmering object

sink gently humming

in the air as it floated

down from the top

of a mountain that was printed

entirely in Japanese colors

finally vanishing

over the vast sea

What on earth it was

or what that ship was

yesterday in the sky

I cannot imagine

perhaps it was the soul

of the Welsh prince

slain by his brother

by the lake of Idwal

over which no bird

has flown since

A belated excursion to

the stone collection

of our feelings

Little left here

worth showing

alas

Is there

from an anthropological perspective

a need for love

Or merely for

yearnings easy

to disappoint

Which stars

go down

as white dwarfs

What relation

does a heavy heart bear

to the art of comedy

Does the hunter

Orion have answers

to such questions

Or are they

too closely guarded

by the Dog Star

Like an early geographer

I paint a lion or two

or some other

wild animal

in my white

memory fields

Porcupine, chameleon

flounder and grouse

jackal and unicorn

xanthos and mouse

Outside with the real

birds screaming in the dark

they stand guard

figuring with their

tiny heads what is

still to come

before the sun

goes out

Crocodile, monkey

buffalo, hare

dromedary, leopard

mud turtle, bear

Is it enough

to be overcome

by feeling

at a few words

in our children’s

school primer

Are these the emblems

of our love

In his year of mourning

Grandfather moved

the piano to the attic

and never brought it

down again

With his brass telescope

he now explores

the arcs of the heavens instead

His logbook records

a comet with a tail

and the categorical proposition

that the moon is the earth’s work of art

From him I also know

of the holy man who sits

where night turns to day

roaring like a lion

And once he said do not forget

the north wind brings

light from the house of Aries

to the apple trees

I

Feeding carefully through the junctions

the early train slips

through the station precincts

a tatzelwurm en route for the city

Riveted gray of the iron bridges

and coming through mist

a peaceful canal

with a barque

from which the Hunter Gracchus

has already stepped ashore

Views to the rear

of inferior housing

wooden sheds tin roofs

dog kennels gutted

cars and tiny

home-made crystal palaces

hung with tomato plants

last year’s hopes

The power station in the outskirts

lying on its back

a sick elephant

still just breathing

through its trunk

The little gold-toothed priest

facing me buries himself

in the news of the day

the ink of the godless

staining the little pink fingers

of a furry day-blind animal

Who scrawled the warning

Hands off Caroline

across the fire-wall

in Ipswich who knows the names

of our brothers the ducks

under the willow on the island

in Chelmsford Park pond

Who knows the noises

made by the animals

in Romford at night

and who will teach

the King’s starling

to whistle a new song

Pulling into the north-easterly

quarters of the metropolis

Gilderson’s Funeral Service

Merton’s Rubbish Disposal

the A1 Wastepaper Company

Stratford the forest of Arden

and the first colonists

on the platform at Maryland

heavenly Jerusalem

skyline of the City

brick-wall catacombs

Liverpool Street Station

II

The city sinks behind me

as I head home in the evening

reading Samuel Pepys’s diary

of the Great Fire of London

People taking to boats

many pigeons killed

panic on the river

looting near Lincoln’s Inn

Bishop Baybrooke’s corpse exposed

fragments blown to Windsor Park

The tatzelwurm passes through the country

nightly shadows hedges and fields

and in the darkness gently

glowing the elephant now

so utterly different

Spent two hours at the end of December

on the Garden State Highway

In the ancient Ford’s trunk

nothing but my heart grown

heavier year by year

A protracted catastrophe:

the constant river of traffic

the endless business of overtaking

vicious eye-contact

with total strangers

in the adjacent lane

Driven by yearning

for its prehistoric brothers

a Jumbo climbs out of Newark

airport over marshes and lagoons

a giant smoking

mountain of rubbish

and the countless lights

of the refineries

Mile after mile of stunted trees

telegraph poles fields of blueberries

a Siberian countryside

colonized then run to seed

with moribund supermarkets

abandoned poultry farms

haunted by millions and millions

of breakfast eggs

harboring the undeciphered sighs

of an entire nation

Near the retirement town of Lakehurst

a safari park soundless

under its coat of frost

cemeteries as spacious

as the world war killing fields

funeral parlors dubious

antique shops and a bus station

for last trips

to Atlantic City

In the twilight of the settlement itself

ten square miles of faintly

luminous bungalows

lawns dwarf-conifers

Christmas decorations

Santa Rudolph the Reindeer

and in front of one of the houses

my uncle feeding the songbirds

Drinking schnapps

he later tells me

of the conquest of New York

Drinking schnapps I consider

the ramifications of our calamity

and the meaning of the picture

that shows him, my uncle

as a tinsmith’s assistant in ’23

on the new copper roof

of the Augsburg synagogue

those were the days

Next day we drive out to the coast

Seaside Park Avenue at noon

the boardwalks deserted

boarded up diners

Alpine-style summerhouses

with circulating draughts

yachts rattling in the cold

the sub-urban migration of dunes

With the brown house-high waves

in the background my uncle

leaning forward into the wind

snapped me again

with his Polaroid

Do we really die

only once