Last parts of 'Susette' by the Flemish writer Erik Spinoy

FRANKFURT/HOMBURG (September 1798 - June 1800)

1  Tears

2  Evening song

3  Dream of death

4  Small tragedy

5  Jester, queen

6  Lethe

BORDEAUX (December 1801 - June 1802)

Remembrance of Menon

FRANKFURT (June 1802)

1  Red lungs

2  Susette’s sick-bed

3  Susette’s grave

FRANKFURT/HOMBURG

(September 1798 - June 1800)

1        Tears

I have to write, elder, my breast

bursts from the silence here. Homburg

is beautiful and close, but trading

brooks no poetic climate. A door

shuts off my balcony room, at the window

I look in your direction. And Hegel

says he had foreseen it all. Three hours till

Homburg, dearest. See how the Feldberg towers.

What’s left of you? Distress, Hyperion, wan

ashen anemia. The summer shuts itself like

a cyclops case. I cannot find you, even

small longings cannot be fulfilled: the garden

bringing some distraction, an honest ewe,

a cow with calf, or one that suckles. The

saddest of winters now begins. The spider weaves

a threadbare fabric. It seems dishevelled. Tear-stained.

2        Evening song

Colour flows away, in search of the dark

source and on the weathercock lay a dead sun.

Long was the day. Round nine o’clock the sheet

warmed me once more. No quiet dream spins

comfort. We live thus on most separated

highlands. Although I would, I never can, with

these my written words, make a sign here for

you. Nothing rids us of eternity,

no light exists that does not, immensely,

shine on the lungs of time. Although the

memory paints poppy-red every shady spot,

the mind remains disturbed. The silk has been

torn to shreds like sail. No matter how

Cobus has changed: he comes and brings me everyday

a gift, and the coach shows us a hart

in flight. But all his sugar’s poison to me now.

My heart in shreds. Where my imagination?

3        Dream of death

...it goes though for the throat? The path

conceals a snare, a pit of snakes? It’s cold,

so cold. Powerless, I glide upon the ice

of terror. The door is on lock and chain.

Does it roam, like once the myth, draped in a

ghostly-white? Wander submerged, disguised

as a dark secret? And ever paler, as if

you thought it up. And nothing, no approach. Just nought.

Oh mirror, reflect me back, give me the shades

and features of a fresco. Covered with

fabric are gold and coffin. Deep under sand

a wooden frame of fingered glass the voice -

‘How I hold dear!’ - smothered. And Jacob G.

pulls at his favoris, laughs biedermeierlich.

Much sauce clucks in his throat and vocal chords.

And lying down. The feeling of cold cellar-floor.

4        Small tragedy

If I’ve your hand, a rib, the weeping

letter image. If sadness glues shards, piece

by piece. Still I don’t have you, you still

are absent. Often I hide high in your room

and dream. Your table is for ever locked.

Hides sealing-wax, a white button, a verse

strewn out in snippets. Later though my

landscape appeared, from hours with engravings.

The favourite dress, purple and white. Teaching

baby knitting. More palely reading, with straying

eyes. Is Tasso standing there, wearing your

features? The door firm-bolted and my throat

tight-laced. And suffering distracts me, a bee

paralyses my right hand. I thought fate

will build our house still, in deep-sea blue valleys.

If death fells hope, in lactic disbelief.

5        Jester, queen

Melts the night away to fluid purple

vinyl. The moon in the window, and I

shivered distrusted. You slipped through the avenue?

Were you the shadow that tried to embrace me

but left, before I could give myself? No look

ever helps in this theatre hall.

I want to feel you, Fritz. Come secretly,

avoid the back door, mount the stairs four up.

My mouth, full of hard fear, awaits you

in the attic. I fear exchanging letters

by the gate. I wave my pennant, white.

You raise your stick, and hide within

the bower. My heart is in my mouth I

bolt the letter’s snatched away. Writing,

though, heightens absence. With flashing teeth I have to

laugh. The white is tangible, suddenly.

6        Lethe

Cold white meanders through my travelogue.

Kassel’s a hollow echo without you.

Paper’s no life, it creaks, turns yellow. Sadly I

read your poems out, like matins, while in bed.

In pallid mist rose melancholia. Once more

the sun, stone-red, was held on bordeaux walls.

The street was wet, the gallery smooth as

mirrors. Stood pensive by the Marmorbad.

I wear your image. Would you disappear?

This is the very end. The may and apple

blossom now are past, and I live outdoors now.

Promise me that you’ll leave, untie your fear

that I’ll plant trees once more, that I’ll till

twenty acres, wear sowing garb, scatter ---

myself - (erased by white and folding, the

pencil seems more like a patch of cloud) - Farewell!

(Her letter, does it ever end?

Who knows. In doubt meaning

increases.)

BORDEAUX

(December 1801 - June 1802)

1        Remembrance of Menon

For snow and tulip fused arrival

With return. Then the sun and May

Shone hard. White was the winter and the northern wall of

The Auvergne razor-sharp as Friedrich’s cold

Wilderness. I lived almost too splendidly, the coach

Taking me along the Gulf, to see Médoc.

Hardened, I tried to sleep, and saw the

Shepherds, marble debris and men and women

Fed by hunger. Art grew tall and spirit

Became oak and stone - the sign was

Silent. Apollo struck me then with lightning flash.

I carried pistols, in the lumpy bed.

Green gardens formed garlands round my Bordeaux,

The winding path connected the

Rock with blue, the heavenly

Garonne. And seawards ever blew

My dearest breeze. Nothing surpassed friends than being

Without a soul, the wine of Blanquefort

Travelling to the Indus and returning

Like rubies. Come wine-god, in the ivy,

Reach me the fragrant goblet full

Of deeply-glowing light. Stir shadow through the sun,

Plant in the yard a fig-tree in full

Bloom. And give me tears then, I a lonesome Achilles.

Just as a wounded hart flees to the woods,

The greenest bed restores my heart

No more. The thorn sticks burning

In my side. Just as the eagle falls, deep and

With bloody feathers, I have inquired of

Every path. The avenue to you is closed,

The house is empty, senseless to me now all

The rest. No archipelago knows merely heroes

Or dew and roses, thaw and bloom. No place

In which our soul regains her year, and flies.

So, heroine, you’re e’er in my mind’s eye. Your image

Proves you inaccessible.

FRANKFURT

(June 1802)

1        Red lungs

I wear no jewels. Yet alabaster is

my skin, stone catches winter light.

Brown cotton or white atlas silk become

me now. Consumptive flush is rouge-like.

The canopy exists? Madder-dye shrinks

the heart, the endless coughing tires the lungs.

The voice is drowning. The rose of the

cabinet closing for good, wilting round

my decay. It runs in foliage, iron on

the sole. No one sees how the source lures

and time heals. The god’s too strong for any

power. His sphere spins ever inwards.

2        Susette’s sick-bed

What burns my lip with bitter taste?

And whose kiss kindled my disease?

Fine bed (satin, cotton, white lace)

so dank. The lance-tip’s lodged deep in

my side. No hand sweeps dreams away

from sleep. Will my breath sing once more?

No bird calls. The pears sleepy and the

tree raven. A foreign will disturbs

the curtain. His hand lies coolly

on me? Is it the fever, an

        open window?

                Is it

3        Susette’s grave

A thaw warms frosted ground. No willow

still mourns her. High in a tower

lives the ink, in which the temple ruin

sinks. Each lime-tree, now past flowering,

scatters pale flakes. In stone gravel gazes

at him - a frieze, triumphal arch built in

decay, three pillars, pollarded, with fragments

spread across a floor, until them too

the white whirlpool engulfs. A snow-field concludes

each story. The sun rises, descends.

The circle turns, obeying its own law.

(Thus I wrote. More presently.)