Winfried Sebald: After Nature

constellation and that above the mountains

already the storm was hanging which soon thereafter

dispersed the supplicants and killed

one of the four canopy bearers.

Apart from the grievous impression this

occurrence, unprecedented in the village’s history,

may have made upon me, and apart from

the raging fire which one night — shortly

before my first day at school it was—

consumed a sawmill not far from our house

and lit up the whole valley, I grew up,

despite the dreadful course

of events elsewhere, on the northern

edge of the Alps, so it seems

to me now, without any

idea of destruction. But the habit

of often falling down in the street and

often sitting with bandaged hands

by the open window between the potted

fuchsias, waiting for the

pain to subside and for hours

doing nothing but looking out,

early on induced me to imagine

a silent catastrophe that occurs

almost unperceived.

What I thought up at the time,

while gazing down into the herb garden

in which the nuns under their white

starched hoods moved so slowly

between the beds as though a moment ago

they had still been caterpillars, this

I have never got over.

The emblem for me of the

scarcely identifiable disaster

since that time has been a stunted

Tatar with a red headcloth

and a white slightly curved

feather. In anthropology

this figure is often associated

with certain forms of self-mutilation

and described as that of the adept who

ascends a snow-covered mountain and long

tarries there, as they say, in tears.

In a sheltered corner

of his heart, so lately

I have read, he carries

a little horse made

of clay. Magical

crosswords he mumbles,

talks of scissor blades,

a thimble, a needle’s

eye, a stone in the memory,

a place of pilgrimage, and

of a small die, ice-coloured,

with a dash of Berlin blue.

A long series of tiny shocks,

from the first and the second pasts,

not translated into the spoken

language of the present, they

remain a broken corpus guarded

by Fungisi and the wolf’s shadow.

After that come the children grown

a little bigger who believe that

parts of their parents ride ahead

on the removal van’s horse

to make ready the living quarters,

while in the dark box

on the way to Gmunden

they eat their supper,

drink two pots of coffee,

spread butter on the bread

and say not a word about

either herring or radish. For months

Grandmother’s dying has now dragged on,

more and more water rising into her body

while in the village shop a poster

outlaws the yellowing

terror of Colorado beetles.

At the forest’s edge often a blackamoor

peered out of an American tank

and in the dark we saw

St. Elizabeth, lifting her skirts,

cautiously stepping over

red-hot ploughshares.

At school the beadle counted

his keys, Palm Sunday catkins

behind the crucifix chanted

their credo, and in the pencil case

on a scrap of paper already

the catchword of our dusty

future could be made out.

So one of us turned

into an innkeeper, the second

into a cook, the third into a waiter and

the fourth into nothing at all.

And from the hills we can see

the wispy shadows drifting

in Jehoshaphat’s Valley.

The magnetic needle, trembling,

points to the north, and I sense

a galvanic taste on my tongue,

a chemical miracle plated inside

with the finest horn silver.

The dreaded blackening

on certain parts

of the body confirms

the whole thing

most satisfactorily.

In a Chinese cricket cage

for a time we kept good fortune

imprisoned. The Paradise apples

grew splendidly, a good mass of gold

lay on the barn floor and you said,

one must watch over the

bridegroom as over a

scholar by night. Often

it was carnival time

for the children. Pink

cloudlets hung in the

sky. Friends came

disguised as Ormuzd

and Ahriman. But then unexpectedly

there was this thing with the elegant

gentleman at the opera and I found

a slowworm in the henhouse.

A crow on the wing lost a white

feather. The vicar, a limping

messenger in a black coat,

appeared on New Year’s morning

alone on the wide snow-covered field.

Ever since we’ve been arming ourselves

with patience, ever since sand

has been trickling through the letter box,

the potted plants have had a way of

keeping things to themselves.

A Nordic tragedy, chess

pieces moved hither and

thither, inevitably always

the end occurs.Why

do we embark on such

an arduous enterprise?

For comfort there remains

nothing but other people’s

misfortune: a feather

venomously yellow

on the beloved’s hat.

Prose from the last century,

a dress entangled in

thistles, a bit of blood,

an exaltation, a torn-up letter,

a star on the uniform and prolonged

stays at the window. Unhealthy

fantasies in a darkening

room, resented sins,

yes, even tears and in the memory

of fishes a dying fire, Emma,

how she burns the wedding bouquet.

What’s a poor country doctor

to make of all that? At the funeral

he dreams of a shining pair of

patent-leather boots and a posthumous

seduction. But now comes

a colourless age. You, in the midst

of this dazzling obscenity

I shall remember your

timorous gaze, how I

saw it first, that time

when in Haarlem we swam

through a gap in the dike.

Anniversaries and numbers,

how long ago it all is,

a chart of signs barely

to be deciphered through

these glass lenses. I still

can hear the Chinese lady

optician say, You ought

now to be able to read this

without straining your eyes,

and for a moment I feel

her fingertips on my temples,

feel how a wave crosses

my heart and in the test picture’s

bright square I see

the letter sequence

YAMOUSSOUKRO,

the name, I am

certain of this,

of a large rusty ship

from Abidjan which years ago

I saw putting out from

Hamburg harbour.

Black sailors stood

leaning on the rails,

they waved to us as they

passed by, the sun was just

going down and already

the shadows were quivering

at the edges.

In his excitement about the truly

boundless growth

of industry, the statesman

Disraeli called Manchester

the most wonderful city of modern times,

a celestial Jerusalem

whose significance only philosophy

could gauge. Half a life ago now

it is that, after leaving my remote home,

I arrived there and took lodging

among the previous century’s

ruins. Often at that time

I rambled over the fallow

Elysian Fields, wondering

at the work of destruction, the black

mills and shipping canals,

the disused viaducts and

warehouses, the many millions

of bricks, the traces of smoke,

of tar and sulphuric acid,

long have I stood on the banks

of the Irk and the Irwell, those

mythical rivers now dead,

which in better times

shone azure-blue,

carmine-red and glaucous green,

in their glow reflecting

the cotton clouds, those white ones