Albrecht Dürer and me Read online

  Albrecht Dürer and me

  Albrecht Dürer and me

  David Zieroth

  Copyright © 2014 David Zieroth

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopy right.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].

  Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

  P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

  www.harbourpublishing.com

  Edited by Silas White

  Cover design by Shed Simas

  Text design by Carleton Wilson

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Harbour Publishing acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  isbn 978-1-55017-674-2 (paper)

  isbn 978-1-55017-675-9 (ebook)

  For those who called me away, and for those who called me back

  Nothing, above all, is comparable to the new life that a reflective person experiences when he observes a new country. Though I am still always myself, I believe I have changed to the very marrow of my bones.

  — from Italian Journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer

  dislocation

  Viennese shoes

  in Wien, even the homeless wear good shoes

  or at least one bedraggled, bearded, filthy-

  coated giant managed uncommonly decent leather

  brogues that toe-curl a bit, an Italian smile

  intimating heat and lust and care for craft

  yes, any change of place forces up generalizations

  rife and ready, and even knowing how quickly

  scenes arise in the mind: lithe men, short hair

  long strides, briefcases, or young artists debating

  over Styrian beer and new wine spritzers the edge

  of mathematical, abstract space – I know really

  very little: glittering steel lines of the tram

  on Ungargasse, straight under my feet

  and along some sections, short grass snuggles

  green against silver – earth and engineering

  power-sharing – what could either say to the other

  about times when heels of famous men

  clacked these cobblestones: Freud’s boots, how he

  slipped into leather smoothly pleased with strength,

  and Hitler’s shoes, paint bespattered, then further back

  and further back again until an Ottoman stands

  outside the ringed wall of the city, 300 cannon strong

  the story goes, Grand Vizier Pasha tapping

  his magnificent Asian slippers on these stones

  passport . . .

  inspected and stamped, leads to

  towers and gargoyles – and cafés

  the ruined faces of fathers

  wide, haughty mouths of mothers

  their children oblivious

  except to couples

  kissing on stone bridges

  an old man crossing himself

  as he bicycles past a cathedral

  document made to bend

  though not in the eyes of the law

  a young woman looks at me

  frankly, then waves me on

  to empty my pockets, remove

  my belt and pass beep-free

  through their ultra-machine

  these open-faced beings

  the way they gaze

  the pale madonnas awaiting me

  lean to the left, ear touching

  the baby’s head, he so finely

  detailed, as if Florentine artists

  wanted to paint more of their power

  into him than into her:

  his divine versus her blessed

  how her near-blandness recalls

  the manner of those calm guards!

  upright in blue shirts

  watching at entryways

  a touch of knowledge

  dusting their cheeks

  train ride

  passing through Linz I notice trains

  preternaturally, not the cylinders

  for carrying acid chemicals

  graffiti on their bulging sides

  but older blocky types

  of faded wood now silenced

  on a weedy siding, while I sit in the upper

  section, aware of speed and efficiency

  across from me two young men gaze

  into a camera steadied by the über-clean

  hands of the blond one, occasionally

  speaking quiet German phrases

  while the old man cross-aisle snorts

  as he sleeps though his jaw remains firm

  and never once does his mouth fall slack

  to reveal a vacuity no one has to see

  while I see how I’ve travelled beyond

  the two paragons but haven’t yet arrived

  at the one who catches his escaping breath

  though I also note he’s mastered not

  sliding on his seat into a heap of age

  I turn away from humans close at hand

  to look again at boxcars and wonder

  what they were filled with, carried

  and left behind: routine stuff of light

  bulbs and oddments from elsewhere

  tractor parts and toiletries, nothing worse

  can be imagined today as our train passes

  through Linz, bearing me, grateful for

  considerate and sleeping companions, easy

  to say now we’re going somewhere safe

  travelling without earplugs

  spotted cows on pasture slopes

  moo where upper alpine snow

  leaks into June-fed creeks constrained

  in narrow rock walls, each unmoved

  by burgeoning white

  when evening arrives, all noises

  cease here in my pension

  except for one: someone’s

  far-off singing, perceptible

  only when other sounds

  subside, its pitch insisting

  my tired mind identify

  and end its e-e-e at once

  and failing to do so

  I resort to pillow-wrapping

  my head, to await any dream

  wherein I escape that timbre

  not unlike the one (I begin to think)

  we hear just before dying: such

  thoughts entangle the traveller

  unwisely travelling earplug-less

  and who is vexed to discover

  next morning the mosquito buzz

  arises from the radio at his bedside

  an opera-broadcasting station

  not turned completely off

  as if the previous person here

  had been malignly planning ahead

  to effect another’s discomfort

  and thus he suffers because he assumes

  he can never correct creation

&
nbsp; believing glumly the arrow

  of the irreparable always aims for him

  yet in the cool of the next dawn

  he’s enchanted to encounter birds

  new to him singing in Italian

  on the occasion of visiting Auden’s grave

  somehow I don’t expect sighing evergreens

  or cruel April’s birds tuning up their notes

  or the autobahn’s whine beyond the church’s

  sweet-cream-pastry-coloured plaster walls

  though I recognize the iron cross and plaque

  labelling the deceased as poet and man of letters

  and somehow the ivy’s dense entanglement

  surprises me as do wilting winter pansies

  on top of the small rectangle of the plot itself

  (how can it hold such long, grand bones?)

  and a two-pence copper coin lying atop moss

  that says he is loved by someone from home

  and those admirers from other lands (like me)

  know better than to swipe this little token

  even as I feel its melancholic foreignness

  enter my thumb and vibrate with an eagerness

  to claim the wrinkled poet as my own

  yes, I know how men slide daily under earth

  and what remains of them upside stays briefly

  before it too leaves like wind or highway noise

  while calamity clots nearby, one hamlet away

  even as that woman in her red coat crosses

  a green field, happy black terrier leaping up

  to her hand, as a crow settles his wings on pale

  winter stubble, and an old man in a crushed hat

  posts a letter at a yellow box – and may a reply

  come sooner than he expects from a grandson

  he loves to praise as only a free man can praise

  but likely it’s a bill, what must be paid

  in a certain period before penalties apply

  and debts accrue and demands mount

  and a day passes in which he fails to relish

  this heaven-side of grass, neglects the glory

  in birdsong! – and in men whose songs rise

  so smoothly from their natures we forget

  how both ease and fine form came to pass

  out of a morning’s work in the low house

  with green decorative siding not far from

  his grave, a domicile easy to pass by without

  a murmur of wonder – though the German words

  under his photo leave me squinting, envious

  of those who know more than I, who knew him

  as a neighbour, summer visitor to Kirchstetten

  on a back road bordered by willows ready to bud

  from soggy forest floor with leaves faint for now

  in Duino

  narrow roads off the autobahn

  offer tour buses no place to park

  should passengers want

  to see where Rilke slept

  Princess della Torre e Tasso’s gilded

  family portraits of past aristocrats

  staring down, uncomprehending

  I step onto a balcony overlooking

  the Gulf of Trieste, notice no angels

  though commercial oyster beds

  at the mouth of the Isonzo River

  provide a symmetry the poet

  may have admired from his cliff path

  I am thinking a trace of gravitas

  might remain on this stone

  balustrade he may have touched

  (or pounded) and where

  in three languages is written

  on its limestone lip the command

  not to lean over, which I heed

  Apollo beams down to warm

  my thoughts again, so once more

  I wonder how the poet saw from here

  ‘wind full of cosmic space’

  what remains for me white cliffs

  and blue sea, curve of the gulf

  and sunlight calling one wave

  to appear just as another dips and

  disappears without any ‘endlessly

  anxious hands’ framing

  what cannot so easily pass away

  Nicholas Lanier, 1628, by Anton van Dyck

  his long nose and wary look, cocked

  right elbow, left hand casual on a rapier

  poking back from the sparkle on its hilt

  and the brightest mark? his wide forehead

  below an abrupt line where brown curls

  shine and announce pride, head’s width

  of blue sky softly clouded, sun-streak burning

  above a background of fake ruins

  and the focus? Lanier’s lips, straight and stern

  ready to sneer, yet showing beneath refinement

  how many times he has been bruised

  (note the hint of green at the left temple)

  hairs on his red moustache curving up above

  his pointed beard ready and set to quiver

  he sat seven days for van Dyck, and both

  clearly relished that wide swath of rich cape

  tumbling down from his left and out of which

  bulge his arms in red-striped fabric

  such a pleasure to paint that the artist

  could manage in an afternoon, highlights

  of folds easy compared to the eyes some

  call cold, others unarmed, the gift of art

  to reflect and reveal each viewer accurately

  commemorative rooms

  Georg Trakl (February 3, 1887, Salzburg to November 3, 1914, Kraków)

  not a word in English, yet I understand

  yellowing paper holds up faded words

  small books plain in design

  black and white photographs

  light from windows muted (a storm

  is building, and later its mountain

  violence breaks and drenches

  my T-shirt: Salzburg, it says)

  from in here I can almost see

  the school he attended, still severe

  and grand and yet submitting

  in this city of churches, it is functional

  first and only with time dignified

  and perhaps saddened

  that many were dead

  in the short film a man’s voice

  intones his poems so tenderly

  I am reminded that language

  this harsh can be loving – because

  back home we’d read translations

  but never softly: scenes of the Eastern Front

  required at least a twisting

  of the jaw so out would come

  how he himself may have sounded

  gurgling on his deathbed from

  an overdose of cocaine, unclear

  whether suicide or error

  – but forever clear his small

  self-portrait: a painted darkness

  of reddish hair, green face

  makes a mask so unlike

  the blond young man in striped trousers

  seen sitting, eager not for war

  but for his life – and I see

  how summer light comes in

  and tries its best to tell me

  not to believe this possessed glow

  here on the wall set to trigger

  my dismay but instead to step

  back into the street, where

  he’d walked, shadows from clouds

  falling on him as they fall on me

  with sudden heat and thunder –
br />   and did he hear in that rumble

  guns that ended more

  than an empire swept away

  with his twenty-seven years?

  what I hear has by now

  been returned to nature, and I know

  enough of this timelessness

  spreads ahead, so I continue still

  to look upward at stone walls

  grateful they had been there

  to hear a schoolboy singing

  Goethe, Ringstrasse

  your green mantle of bronze

  rose up on a street new to me

  dazed me: this chance wander

  and encounter! in my half-

  hope to find an age not yet

  complete, I saw your girth

  x times larger than in real life

  but what’s a statue for

  if not to magnify, focus, inflate?

  and felt unnerved, until I spotted

  the double row of buttons marching up

  how classically draped your coat

  how sturdy your boots, casual

  drooping of your hands, your air of

  certainty and even, yes, touch of

  chagrin at becoming this . . .

  immovable icon

  earlier I’d passed towering Handel

  (or was it Haydn?) I can hardly recall

  now you and I are familiar: my third

  (or is it fourth?) journey to remove

  broken green bottle bits from

  the base of your pedestal, its one

  word, your name, raised in caps

  I ignore traffic swelling behind us

  pulse and drone of Mercedes buses

  touring among snappy winds this place

  has faced since long before you became

  yourself, dispensing clarity as if

  it were the simplest of languages

  more and more you look all inward

  as I gaze up, a ritual in which

  I’ve had my umbrella blown out

  by wind driving rain, same angle

  I felt as a child, and I marvel

  standing here, that I am able still

  to find a hero in your travelling

  toward Italy, in a polymath’s

  colours, plants – old cosmos