First part of the 'Susette' cycle by the Flemish writer Erik Spinoy

 

SUSETTE

Poems

Wem Sonst als Dir

FRANKFURT (December 1795 - July 1796)

1  Hotel ‘Zur Post’

2  Hölderlin’s dream

3  The shoes of Hölderlin

4  Cabinet of her dreams

5  Childhood years

6  The clew of Susette

7  Wedding march

8  What Suzy saw

9  A nightmare

10  Aurora in autumn

11  A day in the country

12  Hölderlin in summer clothes

13  Pictures of Susette

14  De la musique avant toute chose

15  The great glass

FRANKFURT

(December 1795 - July 1796)

1        Hotel ‘Zur Post’

Gone is the young man and his fall. All we

have left upon the water is his wing.

A wave of blue, a moistened pen remember

him and drown him. The lead is rusting,

covered up, and deep. So the old year subsides

in flesh and in champagne. A swell of noise,

a dance’s rise and fall. Dance till you spin,

oh self-forgotten artisan, bawl snatches of

a song. I write, remaining lofty, just.

Below is not where life is.

For hark, with every step the party dies away.

Endlessly the stairs surpass the hall - high up

become one flesh with darkness not empirical.

The oak is silent as the grave. The woodwork knows

nothing of height.

Frankfurt is hoodwinked by a silent snow-shower.

A portal opens, a cold star cluster’s shaken

from the sky. Deeply the singing sleeps beneath me.

The glass is matt. No sign of any flash divine.

A charming scene, befitting New Year’s Eve. The gleam

sleeps on no bed. The mirror shows a face that’s been

erased, a thaw is iced to rooftops. The stairs are higher

than the night, the wood immortally weathered.

2        Hölderlin’s dream

Blue grass waves windlessly, the agora is like

a giant’s head with locks of cornflower blue. High up stands

a table, with a top of veined marble, which stares

with cyclops-eye into the welkin, the transcendental.

He keeps watch, old man Socrates. The guests are

celebrating with Morpheus.

Here it took place, beside a turquoise bed

of unreal roses. No woman came that was

of greatest purity. No name that did not

deceive, though she arose first in the naming.

By then the temple was long since a ruin. Next to

a pillar you knelt down and prayed: stay here,

stay always present. At which the wind fell on

this word, a warm rain murmured or cascading water.

Where is she now? She showed herself, and then was gone.

And with her too the agora disappeared. Since Plato

it would seem sadness comes through writing. So

describe her image. It will not be repeated.

3        The shoes of Hölderlin

The moon is up, its gleam seeks in the snow

to be intensified. On every handrail rests a hand.

Lukewarm air billows from the trachea. (No

more thinking, you think. Yet on it streams,

unstoppably, with or without you.) A flower

opens deathly-pale on the pane. You look and

shiver, for all your beaver coat. Your feet are clammy

by the fire. Shiny new leather creaks.

Meanwhile the snow now crunches underfoot.

The moonlight galvanises her young body

and lines that now approach their fate, entanglement.

An owl-screech splits the night. Each roof’s transformed into

a freshly whetted knife.

4        Cabinet of her dreams

And the cabinet shivers with consumptive flush.

The garden lies white, the shrubs covered over

with sheets. And high up in the slate-blue roof there peers an

unimaginable bull’s eye. The cornea binds

in separating room and garden.

The cabinet smells of lime and fungus, squeezed into

cornice and stone gusset. Although a smell of incense,

sanctity, compensates decay. Wallpaper repeats

a wan Arcadia. (A place of origin,

false and joyless. Yellowing, suffering kingly

boredom.) Then, simply by virtue of their German

names, are: a chair, a nut-brown writing-desk. A small pot for

the ink. Lastly a doll. Flesh is like porcelain.

A wig that’s shiny, with a deadly dose of bleach.

What does this prove? Nothing. A door conceals

another door, etcetera. A bridge dissolves into

the ink-black night. The far side waves in silence.

5        Childhood years

The cabinet pines till, in black and white,

it hears her coming. The furniture wood then gleams

enraptured, the wall gazes from some hundred Italian

eyes. She takes the pen that circumscribes a being?

Perhaps some older girl, singing, continues

playing. All at once so much seems possible.

The jealous door now bolts itself, the clock drinks in

her figure. The chair, with sighs of deepest bliss, bears

her thighs. She has an eye for everyone, always.

The ink-pot wants, with dark desire, a touch of wetness.

She sits just like a poppy blooms. Her head

turns like a large marquee, till it takes her

(the pen the hand). Hot flow her tears, as blue

as ink. Warm moisture stiffens to an image.

The page becomes a map and guide, both.

She seeks an island in the mist, a continent.

The longing stands for genuine youth, Susette,

the native-town. Hides worlds in mist, displays nothing

but unreachability. There, she writes,

sleeps - through sorcery - my Arthur behind thorns.

The writing creates Hamburg, streams that way.

She, listless, almost drowning, drifts with it.

6        The clew of Susette

Around her she seeks galleys now merged into the white.

Her shadow finds but a town, and

colour fading like plush. The street sways

back and forth. A twilight colours the old gables.

Until she sees Papa, her mighty gladiator.

Pitch-black, with deep-notched skin, he curls up on

amphoras. His head is red with hot desire.

His Knossos shoves her Hamburg out of time.

Here, then, he stands - a man. Confuses

rape with tenderness, mingles stuttering

with eloquence. Then bellows huskily.

Reads something of Homer, the blind one.

7        Wedding march

She frees herself from a doorway. He twists

his torso round, with only eyes for her.

Susette, the knitting royal child, remains unscathed

beside him. Wherever her foot passes his

bronze dagger guards.

The way is mire-bound. The horizon’s what she seeks.

Each house spies on her through its wrinkled clay

and oak. Each window stows away a gallery

where webs are as scriptures and He who sees through us

is absent. (A helmet of steel signifies Him.

A cloth conceals His countenance.) Visits are

put off until the breakdown.

He follows. She takes a side-path. Pain clenches

his fleshless fist. The wind gets hold

of her. She wavers, like a weather-vane.

Then she’s kept company by a shepherd:

Gontard appears in Theseus’ guise.

His youth is yellow, like old ivory.

His Greek sounds French, almost.

He draws his sword (a spoke from the

sun), describing a great half-circle.

The ox’s head lies bleeding on the ground.

One eye was good enough, when her

Apollo struck.

8        What Suzy saw

Marie plays mother, dear. ‘Come on, please tell!’

Even a smile though causes pain. Once more

the cherry-mouth says no not me Marie, me and

stories. Susette from now on silent.

This treasure lies in state from long ago.

Can anyone then separate floor and ceiling?

Vaulting in eyes. Lime that cracks, and hail that is white.

Two marbles lie quite still in sombre cavities.

Two jet-black circles stare without awareness.

Mouse-still I count to ten thousand. Will looking be

allowed again?

A broad eye blocks the pane. Decay consumes

the corpse of sound, an echo whispers in the distance.

The starling frequently flies up - to flock

his nature. For all his flying he ends up

dying on the ground. Hello, doctor, hello, little Swiss.

The sound-pill, toneless, stays stuck in your mouth.

This body’s your abode now, witch, so rücksichtslos

bolted and barred. Here are your hands, look, it’s as if

they had been clad with shoes.

Two soles you’re wearing, heavy, copper-red.

Two insteps, cruel, more crooked than Herr Gott.

Two dark cavities, with dead leather on.

9        A nightmare

Cabbage-white, she. A pallid moon reveals what

the night conceals. The air almost unbreathable.

And threadless she walks along the paths of the joyless maze.

And shakes like milk. Loses her way.

Madder roses bloom around the ancient Prachtbau.

In temple-green grape-vines the museum lies hidden.

Red Knossos looks like Guggenheim. A single parasol,

bordeaux in colour, shading Adolf, Plato,

Captain Kirk. A tableau plays in each

and every room which always, on approach,

becomes erased.

Dreamed away this is a firmament. Marie, singing,

draws near. Then he appears on stage: the black Phaeton

in whom her voice expires, after deafening calling.

Is it a sleigh-ride? De Spessart, under fresh-fallen snow.

Through mountain landscape eye-white white. Snowflaking, never

to ascend. Her fear starts to mount: ‘Marie! Marie!

Hold on real tight!’ The voice stands still close to the lips.

A chasm yawns. And down it rushes, suddenly.

10        Aurora in autumn

Not April, and no sign of any fork-tailed bird.

A lock rusts shut, and rain falls. The trace

no proof of her. No marigold or leaf

sets free and binds her too. A yellow jewel

is polished aimlessly. The azure gleams

for nothing.

Nor is it August. No lark soars and

plummets for her sake. She writes. An autumn

starts that crushes her. A spider absent in

the silver thread. A morning’s misty glimmer.

The ferns continue dying.

She writes. Her letter catches what he loses -

the pen repeats: A-way! A-way! She is

Aurora, sister of the moon. Tithonus (the man

from Bern) was consumed like straw by fire. When old

he drank ambrosia till he became a cricket.

(Susette is plagued still by a nameless thirst.

The goblets are all charged with gold. She clasps

a pane of blue, unshatterable glass.)

11        A day in the country

The Whitsun meadow is a spa. Susette awakes

as if she’d never lived. Chiselling once more an Eden

on the Main. Opens the roses round the house, hangs mist

up in the chestnut tree. Gulps in a bashful rest. And eats

a latish breakfast with him, in the jasmine bower.

Damask, that calls out for a silver gleam.

A look, petrified at her entrance. She,

though, avoids his eye, enters the room more slowly.

Her crinoline weighs like zinc, as she takes in:

a warm and sun-drenched bower, with curtains waving

through the glacier-blue day. Paper-thin Meissner

china tinkles on the table. She sits, scoops

three spoonfuls of sugar in her tea. What’s sweet

seems, by definition, good for her.

‘You’re writing, Sir?’ A mere youth still

in Frankfurt’s middle class, a poet with

the marble (body and nature) of a Phidias.

A red mist slowly swirls before her eye.

Yet he seems scared, and with no thought of her.

Although good company. No Klopstock, Schiller

can hold a candle to him. Above the stars the

surge of battle’s silent. For centuries he’d known

her from afar. For him she is Urania. And this

exchange of words: the Rhine that breaks its banks.

Well, then, that doesn’t sound too bad.

12        Hölderlin in summer clothes

Palace of red, blood-red horns. Old Knossos

rests in unsubstantial concrete. Brand-new paint

is keeping dolphins in the megaron. The monarch

died. The maze is looking for a spot.

So is Susette now without trace. The Main’s lost

in liquidity, and at the bed the

raven time escapes. Writing creates her,

making her unattainable.

Where is the night in spring that was hotter

than Africa? The jackdaw knew no sleep.

The night was for the garden a blue skin.

And then in sight Susette’s dress. Willing, perhaps.

Gone too her sewing-room, in which she read the stars.

Once she arranged the cosmos, forced moon and sun to

observe a Swiss precision. Unlocked his eye and ear.

Took care of him, so doleful on the grass.

Began a flood of words, in which the moon

was lost and with the moon each constellation.

What is preserved in ink?

Who here is real?

13        Pictures of Susette

A drawing that almost floats and reels with

haziness. An oval face that stiffened

into death. One bust is still empirical.

A second, mislaid because of war, left

but its reflection in a camera.

They are fragmented, pictures of Susette.

The echo lasts, in song and antiphon. In marble

she looks Greek and lifeless: with a mouth too small,

too little chin. The waves that grace her hair like lilies have

wilted. Lit up she wears a tunic with

shoulder-stud and edged with lace. And yet I never

saw an emptier eye, in such white features.

Whereas the small portrait cannot but enchant.

She moves in secret in a cloud of hair,

reflected in horse-chestnuts. She wears it loose,

untied and in confusion. Her dress, made of

blue velvet, merges into a green ground.

Her neck is hugged by strange, unheard of fur.

A sharp profile points arrow-like

at what, elusive, lies elsewhere.

And all is covered in a twilight glow.

A tint that’s Titian-like, a veil with

the colour of palest red roses.

This is how far one can persist,

and yet exist.

14        De la musique avant toute chose

Planet and constellation, listless and

silent, revolve around her. Perusing their laws,

she holds a globe carelessly in her hand.

Not of music is she the muse.

Her deeds are those of harmony.

When the season of the salon started, she was

caught in a maelstrom of velvet, silk and wigs.

From far there resounded buzzing, stifled in

the tapestry, and heavy damask of hangings.

She knew the winter round the house, inside the

smoky twilight. On each and every chair

shone icy grease and thick, wilted fabric.

She sat then at the piano, and strummed and sang

her song till it was done, received applause,

performed a révérence. And Cobus saw

and nodded, pulling at his favoris.

She sometimes played alone, or with Marie

and Hölderlin. Then roguishly

pulled up her skirts, she was still young,

and sang as if it could never fade.

She gave her heart to the piano.

Marie talked sweetly to her lute and

Fritz blew gamely on his flute.

He was indeed a Phaeton!

(An unknown wind ascended from

her lips, now blossoming in song.

Fear was at once a bed of roses,

pain was deserved and needed.)

15        The great glass

Susette sings. Her mouth grows wider and

gives voice. Susette sings, as did the sirens

at Salerno, once. He is enticed by that

high mouth to silence. A key she gives, where

there was no way in. He is as in a bell-jar

with her, fashioned of unblown glass.

The room resembles now a yellow ward.

He rests upon a bed of milk-white steel

until she mounts the stairs and full of longing

grants him life. He lives once more.

(Susette reflects.)

A vein sinks bluely in his skin.

Its colour fades, the forehead

crumpled like paper. Maybe he

writes a love-letter to her?

‘I give you roses, madam.

Throw those shoes away.’