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

Our memories are quite similar
but pickled alive
in a poison which
accompanies objects too
as a part of this emptiness
The heartening message
that Pythagoras once
would listen to the stars
barely comes down to us now
Then let us hope
our children are learning
to dance in the dark

With borrowed voices
the ventriloquist renders
others’ pipe-dreams
A gentleman disguised
as a moth pulls
tropical birds from a hat
The gaudiest parrot
weighs a memorized
word destiny
in his hand
As accustomed dupes
the local fowls
sit in the cheap seats
thrilling to the da capo

Dialectically thrashed out campaigns
and drafts from days
pending wasted battles
Like every evening
the set task is left
undone in the sandpit
Heeding a dubious silence
I sleep at night
with my ear to the ground
Its distant sounds
spell out
the lessons of a lighter world

My beard grows overnight
every time
like a dead man’s
I have even begun
to speak in foreign tongues
roaming like a nomad in my own
town weighing the witch’s
thaler in my hand
It would seem to be time
to apply to the outworks
and register what
we have forgotten
Once there
given the superior outlook
my poor sedentariness
will pass

In honor of my canny schoolmate
and god of wonders
I had promised a
Chinese fable
In crow’s-feet characters
the black bird
translated itself
nimbly to my page
The little vixen however
escaped and tumbled
in the grass and all
but laughed herself to death
So all I have left
is this monosyllabic
creature on my shoulder

The mightiest however
seem those kings
who have never lived
Even today
they tempt us
on tours
to Soliman’s garden
on a horse
with clipped wings
To comfort the bereaved
it is advisable that reports of such trips
be prepared in advance
For it will often have proved
far too lovely to return
in any calculable future

Returning from a lengthy trip
he was astonished to find
he had strayed to a country
not his place of origin
For all his encounters in scattered spots
with the black paper hearts of men
shot by the arquebuse
his bow-and-arrow story
did not happen
Then there was Penelope’s
Castilian grandmother
blocking his entry at the garden gate
wordless and busy with embroidery
Sure, the grandchildren
are smiling in the background
apparently better disposed
towards foreigners
Their furtive hopes
still almost too small
for the naked eye
(But the idea is good
and the noise far away
even the building)

Until the light has
failed as if bereft
the white mist
barely infiltrating
the trees
and as if they were painted
on a green landscape the animals
descending to their black shelters
come to a standstill
at the edge of our gaze
resolute
half his journey done
our ailing neighbor too
pauses
reckoning the distance left

The band was playing
and singing a little Turkish
marching song, with ensigns
shouldered they filed out
onto the plain at their ease
to where their ships lay
concealed beneath the cliffs
Their camp has long
been abandoned the soldiers
long ago returning to an older
post in a different time
But in Northamptonshire
their legacy has remained
green acanthus and orchards
houses inhabited still
by the Roman gaze
Guarding what once
was brought here
safely from afar
the Dardanian gods

Faced with the deep shadows
of the mountains of growing darkness
we had to break our journey
Making ourselves at home
high in the canopy of the forest
with the birds and fishes
Discussing the dragging winter
and maybe blowing a tune
on the Berecyntian horn
Savoring our dawdling
the poor Penates
smile among themselves

The beginners have concluded
an exercise in the accomplishment
of elaborate figures
as part of their training
in advanced impromptus
Abandoned now
the sand-track curves
into the lengthening shadows
Then, slipping through subito
from some other place an apparition
crosses our field of vision
at an astonishingly measured tread
Démonstration, Messieurs,
the zenith of my art,
riding, at a walk, and
that without flaw
or flourish
Says almost imperceptibly
bending down towards us
prior to vanishing
at the other side
Chiron the old centaur

The real disaster
so they say are the consolations
the garde bourgeoise
in the republic of our dreams
Repetition once mere play
a five-finger exercise suddenly
a repertorial must
for intractable pupils
To cheer people up
they shift the scenes now and then
in our moral institutions
The mountain backcloth sinks
into the waves and time sheds
its skin every year
Out of sorts in the stalls
the Troubadour beholds
the panoptic spectacle while
poised at the entrance
Malatesta forks out for his ticket

Setting:
On the Sandwich Islands
the Dictaean Grotto
Personae:
Basil the Rainmaker
and the coiled polar dragon
Plot:
Somnia, terrores magicos,
miracula, sagas, nocturnos
lemures portentaque Thessala
Intermezzo:
Acts of negligence in accordance
with relative beauty
strength or wit
ex. gratis: The plump Etruscan,
the ivory flute
and Latin song
aut:
Proteus sub aqua submersus
putting ugly cattle to pasture
aut etiam:
The Sphinx
fleeing toward Libya
Final Tableau:
Victorious Basil
earns the sobriquet Fifty
Analysis:
Salomo Schellenkönig the skilled
basket weaver counts his coppers
Balance:
A small
fortune

Recently seen
in the vicinity of Flore
Northants, the rhinoceros
appeared this morning
in my garden
With a sly look albeit somewhat
nonplussed it stood in the herbs
wreaking as it shifted its weight
from one foot to the other
considerable havoc
The animal is a victor
the elephant’s mortal foe
for when he comes upon it
the beast will charge headfirst
between its front legs
They also say
the rhinoceros
is quick joyful and
lusty too
Odd to say it did not retire
to the bushes after its wont
but with its head arrogantly
cocked on one side ascended
skywards in a gaily embroidered
Californian moored balloon [3] Large and very handsome flying and sailing device constructed by Messrs. H. and C. Artmann, Royal Engineers/
A monotheistical
creature it would seem
while the elephant
as Pliny tells us
is clever and just
and worships the sun
and the moon