Ashes for Breakfast

by Durs Grünbein

  To start over—isn’t the true beginning

  In the days immediately ensuing,

  In the woman’s wondering who was the object

  Of such forceful suit. Possibly

  Her echoes sound alien to her by the morning,

  The new life, glimpsed prematurely,

  Blackmails her and forces her to turn back,

  In panic that her own life is over.

  What are his groans, compared to

  The devastation wrought within her,

  The disruption of her rhythm, her hesitation

  Before the egg reaches its hill station,

  Her fear of the ending, shortly beginning.

  Observe how often you flinch from your re-

  Flection on the lacquered metal of car hoods,

  In reflector sunglasses, on encountering

  Yourself in a revolving door

  That spins you in. So rapidly replicated,

  You were always there ahead of yourself

  Like the hedgehog in the fairy tale, an irritating

  Opposite number. Drifting malignantly

  On eyes of fat in soup, in every glass of beer,

  Were there not always too many of you?

  Was there not always one of your doubles

  In every droplet, making you wonder

  Whether time really did cover its traces.

  Think from the rim of wounds, from the veto

  Of the intestines, the silence

  Of the cranial seams. The moonrise

  Of your fingernails adduces

  Other heavens more sternly starred.

  Strange the flights, the dim view

  From narrow bone arches

  Of cloacas and tombstones,

  Scraps of skin, cyclical and constellations at hand.

  The orbit is more generous here,

  It takes longer on chillier nights

  For the bleeding to be stanched,

  And hunger to tamp the body, the black hole.

  It’s a long time since your finger was a crutch,

  A walkway into the air

  For the singer of Thebes, the green grasshopper,

  The wild hordes of june bugs,

  The hoplites on the edge of the field, the shield louse.

  The wings always bleached

  On tired butterflies, papyrus streaked

  With hieroglyphs.

  Dirt marked the route of the caterpillar colonies.

  Greeny hills, the thumb bloodied

  From the body of the squashed mosquito.

  On the back of your hand, meanwhile,

  One of the ant-sappers was digging in.

  Nothing is lost, not while grass sprouts

  From every crack. The tree

  Measures human life in little rings.

  Of an apartment block, in the event of fire,

  Only a charred hole will remain,

  Or a kids’ playground. A kite soars aloft

  In the city’s updraft of pollution,

  A paper boat in a puddle

  Sets keel to breakers. How your heart leaps

  To hear the scolding blackbird

  Defend her patch of lawn by the side of the road,

  And green everywhere. Your walk takes you

  Over graves, knocked down to pathway.

  But the real terror was the times table

  That enmeshed your dreams,

  Day after day the whirring of boomerangs

  Around the innumerable things, the compulsion

  To engagement and action, counting

  In your sleep, the algebraic crippling.

  Ever since you, a little squiggle, mute over your exercise book,

  Locked figures up in little boxes,

  You yourself have become this multiple whole,

  Divided into integral parts, the head

  Havering between positive and negative,

  Skin and brow so infinitely pleated. Your days

  Numbered, your life became an interval.

  Shivering under masks of knowledge,

  Freaked out by the extraordinary,

  Dreamless by day under cynical clocks,

  Timetables, scales, counseled by

  Cheerful killers, in front of the monitor—

  It made you sarcastic. Gripped

  In the gritted teeth is diminution,

  Malevolence in shortage,

  In a scatty monologue the sweet songs

  Of the child, run away from home

  And city, over the fields to villages

  Where your feet throb at night,

  The backs of your eyes peopled by monsters.

  Your nerves worn smooth as under wing cases,

  It takes just a screaking crane at noon

  To make you jump, a whistle

  Round the corner, the hiss of a ring-pull.

  In this latest confrontation of heaven and hell,

  Something bursts asunder, causes cracks to run

  Through the old brain arch of the century.

  The ground rumbles. Sistine echoes

  Resound from museum hours,

  Ticking across empty squares.

  The same lime that narrows the arteries

  Drives the roads out into the countryside,

  Parts the spirits in front of a skyscraper wall.

  And always the waiting for transport

  From here to there, where arrival

  Is a doorway in the rain, and a white airport

  Spells immediate departure: you exit

  Through a 24-hour cinema, a perma-neon café,

  Past conveyor belts murmuring

  With the plausible luggage of others.

  No one there to meet you,

  You step, jet-lagged, into the open, reeling

  With the memory of claustrophobia,

  An evacuee by taxi from the earthquake zone

  To your hotel, to the salle des pas perdus,

  Where a sudden updraft dispatches you to the nearest track.

  The coldest room becomes a sauna

  To your straying. How steeply the steps

  Lead down into the earth’s interior, how choking

  The smell, how strict the separation

  Of Ladies and Gentlemen … The wrong door,

  No sooner touched, leads you astray,

  To forbidden zones, to walls scribbled

  With the witty obscenities of the other side.

  Nothing so confining as gender.

  Locked into cubicles, all ears to the pump,

  The Stygian flush, the bowels and bowls,

  Alone with disgust and desire,

  The body pressed dreaming to the tiles.

  Good to know that black preserves things,

  That it compels the eye, a last customs post,

  More dependable than any blue.

  No splutter of color, no

  Torment, just a simple exit

  Without sostenuto. Poor piano,

  Distorting the notes in its varnish.

  Every cloth keeps more for itself.

  The hot asphalt holds the footprints

  Of the summer’s pedestrian. No,

  It’s a rare black that absorbs death,

  Licks up the puddles of blood, entombs

  The light, last refuge of the nerves.

  Did we know what makes the world go round?

  That love tends to isolate

  Seemed clear enough. Everyone kept it for himself,

  His personal thorn, till the blood

  Soaked through at the worst possible moment.

  It was rare for anyone to remain uninjured.

  More commonly, the pain transferred itself

  To the other party. To be left

  Was the worst evil, to be insentient in spring,

  Stand like an amputee under the busted

  Ferris wheel … The way the wind carried us

  Into the treetops from which

  We were later to fall with blissful
cries.

  Did most of it not pass you by without trace,

  Into silence? Hardly to be stopped,

  The faraway cloud formation, the rainy day,

  The accident with the fatal consequence.

  And every crisis began with you.

  It was you that caused the gridlock.

  In the remarkable scene around you

  Feelings darken. A shock lights it again.

  Time flows by, in conversations,

  Washing your hands, over supper.

  Prayer wards off the worst atrocities,

  The idol shielded from the dangerous draft—

  A face pops up, already aged.

  Can you guess how overcrowded this space is

  With dust and voices, swirling

  Through the depths of time. Was the dragonfly

  A splinter from the propellers

  Of the Great War? Did the swarm of midges

  Not perform their ballet in a magnetic field?

  In the windy corridors of the street,

  Still far off, a beady jackdaw

  Marks you down. Out of the rustling of leaves

  Rises the ancient dispute

  Of theological theses. Trembling,

  You miss the one pebble, the single

  Blade of grass, earth’s embrace, deadly as ever.

  EINEM SCHIMPANSEN IM LONDONER ZOO

  Waren es Augen wie diese, in denen das Fieber zuerst

  Ausbrach, das große ›Oho‹, wortreich von Reue gefolgt?

  Was für ein Sprung, was für ein Riesensatz aus dem Dickicht,

  Von diesem Schimpansen zu Buster Keatons traurígem Blick

  Über die Reling, dem Hut nach, unerreichbar im Wasser.

  Und die Entfernung nimmt zu! Mit jedem neuen Unfall

  Wird die Wirbelsäule ein wenig steifer, halten die Hände

  Das Steuer fester inmitten der Trümmerhaufen aus Rädern

  Und Blech, zerquetscht. Schon damals dasselbe Mißgeschick,

  Derselbe hektische slapstick. Mit nacktem Arsch voran

  Zurück in die kleinen Paradiese zu friedensstiftendem Sex.

  O weh, diese Trauer, geboren zu sein und nicht als Tier,

  Die böse Vergeblichkeit, hingenommen mit unbewegtem Gesicht.

  TO A CHIMPANZEE IN THE LONDON ZOO

  Was it in eyes like these that the fever first flickered,

  The great Aha, followed by voluminous remorse?

  What a giant step from the jungle, what a leap

  From this chimpanzee to Buster Keaton’s sad eyes

  Over the railing, gazing after his hat in the water.

  And the distance growing! With every fresh mishap

  The spine stiffens a little more, the hands grip the wheel harder

  In the smoking wreckage of rubber and steel.

  Even then the same error-proneness,

  The same hectic slapstick. And so, sidle back

  To the little paradise for pacifying sex with the missus.

  Oh, the sorrow to be born as not an animal,

  The forlornness, accepted with expressionless features.

  EINEM OKAPI IM MÜNCHNER ZOO

  Daß eine Stahltür sich öffnet, und seinen letzten Käfig

  Betritt ein Fabeltier, zitternd, weil es Zeit ist zum Füttern,

  Weil der Pfleger nach Hause will und das Publikum lacht,

  Steht in keiner der Einhorn-Legenden verzeichnet. Okapi, —

  Ein Wort aus den Urwaldsprachen, die niemand mehr spricht.

  Zu kurz für Savannen, hat dieser geduldige, rostbraune Hals

  Die Strohballen verdient, den vergitterten Schlafstall.

  Denn die gerodete Welt wird ihm fremd sein, so fremd

  Wie dem zerstreuten Besucher ein kombiniertes Tier,

  Halb Giraffe, halb Zebra, und von den kindlichen Schatten,

  Den Bilderbuch-Silhouetten beider, gleich weit entfernt.

  Noch so ein Wiederkäuer verlorener Zeiten, ein Posten

  Am zoologischen Wegrand aufgestellt, wie zur Warnung

  Vor der Exotik von Hinterbliebenen, einsam in ihrer Art.

  TO AN OKAPI IN THE MUNICH ZOO

  The clank of a steel door, and the ignominious entrance

  Of the heraldic beast, trembling, because it’s feeding time,

  And the keeper wants to knock off, and the beastly onlookers are laughing …

  These are things not writ in any unicorn legend. Okapi—

  The word is from jungle languages, now themselves extinct.

  Insufficiently tall for the savannah, this patient, rust-colored

  Throat merits its pellets of straw, and its locked stall at night.

  Because the free range world will be strange to him,

  As strange as to the bemused visitor

  This combination of giraffe and zebra,

  Equally remote from the familiar child cutout of either.

  One more ruminant from the olden days, a sentry

  Planted on the zoological roadside, as though to warn

  Against the pathos of the exotic throwback.

  EINEM PINGUIN IM NEW YORKER AQUARIUM

  Für gewöhnlich fängt es mit Kunststücken an. Eine Tierschau

  Präsentiert die geordneten Reihen, Kokarden nach vorn:

  Seehunde im Trio, Bälle jonglierend auf ihren Nasen, schlanke

  Wendige Statuen, von Dompteuren synchron geschaltet

  Wie am Broadway die Tänzer, in den Ghettos die Eckensteher,

  Schlaksig verrenkt vor den Feuerleitern. Dann erst kam er,

  Dieser junge Pinguin mit dem Namen des deutschen Gelehrten,

  Der einfach nur dastand, nichts konnte, nichts wollte, der Held

  Früher Vaudevilles, flackernder Filmkomödien, schwarzweiß

  Gezeichnet, den Stufen preisgegeben, der windschiefen Welt.

  Heimlicher Favorit einer Minderheit kindlicher Wähler,

  War er im Frack der Hotelportier, am Beckenrand schwankend,

  Fröstelnd auf Schwimmflossen, die Flügel zuckend. Wie elend,

  Vollendet sein Nichtstun, bis in den Abgang, ganz ohne Knicks.

  TO A PENGUIN IN THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM

  It generally begins with tricks. An animal show

  With the serried ranks, eyes and medals front:

  A trio of seals, juggling balls on their noses, slim

  Flexi-statues, synchronized by their trainers

  Like Broadway chorines, or men mooching on street corners,

  Lissomely draped around fire escapes. And then he came,

  This young penguin with the name of a German philosopher,

  Who just stood there, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything,

  A hero of early vaudeville, of flickering black-and-white

  Comedies, imperiled by flights of steps, by a windy world.

  Secret favorite of a minority of the childish electorate,

  He was the butler in tails, teetering on the brink of the pool,

  Shivering on his flippers, swishing his wings. His performance

  Faultlessly abject, down to the exit, sloping off, without a bow.

  FROM

  NACH DEN SATIREN

  (1999)

  IN DER PROVINZ I

  (NORMANDIE)

  Eingefallen am Bahndamm,

  Liegt ein Hundekadaver quer im Gebiß

  Kreideweiß numerierter Schwellen, erstarrt.

  Je länger du hinsiehst, je mehr

  Zieht sein Fell in den Staub ein, den Schotter

  Zwischen den Inseln aus frischem Gras.

  Dann ist auch dieses Leben, ein Fleck,

  Gründlich getilgt.

  IN THE PROVINCES I

  (NORMANDY)

  The body of a dead dog lies

  Slumped on a railway embankment, chewed up

  Among the chalk-numbered sleepers.

  The longer you look, the more

  His skin merges with the dirt, the pools

  Of gravel in among the emerald grass.
>
  And then the stain also of this life

  Is finally laundered away.

  IN DER PROVINZ II

  (AUF GOTLAND)

  Nur dies gab es auf lange Sicht hier, diesen Wellenfluß

  Von Landschaft, fokussiert in einem Bussardauge, —

  Die kahlen Hügel, einen Feldweg und am Rand

  Die Hasenpfote im Gebüsch, vom Wind zerzaust

  Ein abgenagtes Sprunggelenk, das in der Hand

  So leicht wog wie ein Vogeljunges,

  Das noch beweglich war, noch warm war und heraus

  Sprang aus der Pfanne, blutig wie die Beute

  Des Grauen Würgers auf dem Dorn der Eberesche, —

  Ein kleiner Knöchel, winkend mit dem Fetzchen Fell.

  Sah so der Rest von einem Hasen aus, nachdem

  Der Schatten eines Flügels über ihn gekommen war,

  Den Zickzacklauf ein Krallengriff, den flachen Atem

  Gezielter Schnabelhieb beendet hatte? Unbequem

  Muß dieser Tod gewesen sein, auf winterlicher Erde

  Wehrlos verrenkt, die letzte Zuckung.

  Was vom Gemetzel übrigblieb, hing in den Zweigen,

  Die sich an nichts erinnern wie bestochne Zeugen.

  Das Gras, längst wieder aufgerichtet, sorgt dafür,

  Daß es auf lange Sicht nur dies gab hier, den Hasenfuß.

  IN THE PROVINCES II

  (IN GOTLAND)

  From a distance, this was all there was to see,

  An undulating landscape assembled in a buzzard’s eye,

  The bare hills, a track and at the edge of it

  A rabbit’s foot in the undergrowth, riffled by the wind,

  A well-gnawed ankle joint that weighed no more

  In the hand than a baby bird,

  Still moving, still warm, that leaped

  Out of the frying pan, bloodied as the prey

  Of the gray butcher bird, on the rowan spike—

  A little lump of bone beckoning with a flap of fur.

  That was all that was left of a rabbit

  Once the shadow of a wing crossed its path,

  After its zigzag dash had been cut off by a claw, its panting

  Breath by a well-aimed beak. How comfortless