by W. G. Sebald
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
Solnhofen
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
Leaving Bavaria
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
Something in My Ear
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
Panacea
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
Mithraic
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
Memo
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
Barometer Reading
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
K.’s Emigration
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
Through Holland in the Dark
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
Abandoned
like Kafka’s essay
on Goethe’s abominable
nature
Mölkerbastei
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
A Galley Lies off Helsingborg
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
Holkham Gap
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
Norfolk
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
Crossing the Water
In early November 1980
walking across
the Bridge of Peace I almost
went out of my mind
Natural History
In Man it is
the Quadruped
in Woman the Amphibian
who has the upper Hand
Ballad
Is Carl Löwe’s
heart
really
immured
in a column
in the Church of St. James
in Stettin?
Obscure Passage
Aristotle did not
apprehend at all
the word he found
in Archytas
&n
bsp; Poetry for an Album
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
Eerie Effects of the
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
Unidentified Flying Objects
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
The Sky at Night
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
A Peaceable Kingdom
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
Trigonometry of the Spheres
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
Day Return
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
t
he 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
New Jersey Journey
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
