Poem by the Dutch writer Ramsey Nasr

What we have left – a poem about empty scales

1.

Assumption, there’s a room. The room has a fixed number of components.

There is a window to the left. There is light that falls through it. A necklace of pearls

and a yellow satin jacket with ermine collar. Invariably a table also

to bring out the components: look a loaf, look a basket.

These are the organs.

In the background of the room a painting or land-map figures.

Or at least a nail. Then the canvas has been briefly removed, stands behind the viewer.

Painting, frame, mirror and land-map form the boundary

a second skin to live in. A strange membrane that breathes

between inside and outside.

Only the visitors change. Now and then they change the position of the organs

stand still in their closed system of paint and sable-hair

open the window, play lute or guitar, read letters, pour out milk

or stand almost viviparous in the Dutch room.

Just as this lady.

With her belly bulging before her like a glowing sickle she seems

to be weighing air. And she is expecting. But what?

Furthermore, the woman does not weigh: she waits. Like a half Mary

she stands still in her blue-white pouch of the night. An unapproachable

heart with two scales.

Much is seen in her that is not there. Earlier it was said: ‘Type Vanitas.

The woman meditates upon eternal life.’ And she was given names such as

Weigher of Gold. Or of Pearls. Her belly seemed a full living room.

It was the gleam that has led us astray as aureoles, for centuries.

For the scales are empty.

And whoever seeks references, wants to make deep-sea observations or rather

to cherish higher values, must of course do so, but this is enough.

This suffices for me, like a pagan belief in the tangible.

The higher dwells in the room. A window is a crust of bread is a table.

Vermeer was the great equaliser.

When the painter died, the organs remained behind intact:

the glass, the paintings, the land-map and the yellow jacket too

that was worn first by this and then by another woman

they still lay in the room, that seemed no emptier than before.

Only the steward had disappeared.

No sketch or drawing by him has survived, almost nothing

is known of him today no fragments of diary entries or chance letters

except the letters in his paintings, which have since been dispersed

over The Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, New York and Washington DC.

The room has propagated itself.

2.

Another room also exists. This room is scarcely lit.

Nothing on the table. It is silent and deserted there. A small round window

was left open in the wall. Through this small hole the world peeped

inside, spreading a sky-blue colour against the wall.

This was the committee room.

For years loans were issued from this room like loose pearls.

All who could mist a mirror yes without help could scrawl a signature

had marbles rolled towards them, as meanwhile attempts were made

to keep the pearl, or at least to withhold the lustre of it and to flog this

once more separately,

to channel it to a new space, in order then to chisel loose

the weight of the lustre and to lay this down wilfully

on another man’s table as holy creditworthiness, and yet again

another man’s hopeful table – a risk must be kept on the move, away, quickly away

from this room, still further

from room to room, till in a final jet-black far-off corner

even the shadow of the weight of the lustre of the former pearl

had been removed, the caboodle rebundled so often that the walls

started to slide by themselves and formed tunnels, like nerve bundles

in a system with no exit.

                  And the system

                  Saw that it was good

                                    neither head nor tail was it

                                    coreless and without measure

lighter than ether was it

better than perfect.

With reference to nothing but itself

it had become constantly more manifold. It spread itself

in wild ecstasy like a sky-blue light over the waters, from New York

to Paris and Berlin and The Hague, Amsterdam – right until

no one could distinguish a mirror from a window any more.

Technically speaking, everything

was tops. Once a person puts morality aside

he can see even in cancer a gallant form of propagation

of pure gain in fact. We were overrun with prosperity.

The fun wasn’t over until the pearl necklace was inquired about.

The pearls... ah, yes. Where were they.

Like glittering confetti they lay pulverised and spread abroad, there

somewhere on the edge of our economy, my lady. But where exactly,

that is the question. And the woman asked for her pearls once more. In her hand

two scales. Like a lump of dusk the sun outside began to set.

Bathed in its yellow-leaded glow

the lady from Washington had stood there continually. Now she observed

how the scales at last came to a standstill, how on the spot

in a sudden balance between air and wilful bullshit

this whole system collapsed like a pneumothorax – room on room upon room.

3.

I have a proposal.

The time has come to count our blessings. Milk. Earring

Delft Brick. We are the owners of light. As good

stewards we ought to feed ourselves once more with paint.

It’s not difficult.

You take a shockproof crate to America and ask there:

‘The orange curtain, that light from the left and that pair of old scales

may we borrow them? We’ll bring it all back in two months.’

But we won’t do that.

This canvas stays here. Let us dismantle and fetch back

all rooms in this way. We put back the whole lot together

go and sit in the one room. Calmly tot up what we have left.

This is what is left:

One mirror. Two hands. A black & white floor, golden edges

gleaming sickle and ultramarine. The embers of a disaster

are tangible like a loaf or glass. Edible like a table.

This at least – this is genuine.

Let the pregnant woman remain here, in your building. Not out of avarice this

but to save her life. We gave them the lustre of a pearl as pledge.

That must suffice. Let everyone receive his due portion.

We were consistently taken for a ride

run down to the bone we have lived in boxes of optical illusion

but that paint is ours. Today we will learn how to look. Let us

dwindle into this room, and get used to the lean years.

Let us with the very last

bonuses we still have, that we can scrape together from the

shameless chinks of our soul, fetch back our canvases and say:

so that is a loaf. This is glass-in-lead. That’s what the radiance of water feels like.

It is not yet too late.

Look through the window from the outside inward. Look then: what is there

is there. And yes, it is little. But we too will be rich.

We will learn to be the proud possessors of empty scales.