My profession was facial prostheses
and the war called for all my art.
I helped a soldier with a shot-off jaw
get back to living with others again.
Another recovered half of his face
with a half Kaiser Wilhelm moustache.
If only I could craft a piece of cortex
that would give a helplessly fumbling man
back his memories!
And provide a sleepless brain
with a small wreath of barbed wire
that kept the memories away.
I lost my bishopric because of my musings.
Could not rid myself of the description of God
provided by Plato in Timaeus:
The Creator forgot to include
his permanence in the system of laws
and became a victim of the transience
he had laid down for all things created.
This absent-minded God has his grave in the world.
With his dissolved brain he broods on the thought
– it ought to resemble burgeoning grass –
of how creation can be re-established.
It must absolutely appal him
that he has created us in his image.
According to the cabled reports of last Monday, the disease of which Frederick III died was cancer of the larynx. The autopsy proved that the larynx was completely destroyed by cancer, and that purulent bronchitis existed. There was also inflammation of the finer ramifications of the bronchial tubes into which purulent particles had entered. The whole larynx was in a state of suppuration, and presented a soft lumpy mass, with scarcely any trace of cartilaginous structure remaining. There was nothing to show the existence of perforation of the walls separating the trachea and œsophagus. The choking sensation from which the Emperor suffered during the last of his life, which was attributed to such a perforation, appears to have been really due to collapse of the larynx, owing to the destruction of the cartilage. The direct cause of death is given as paralysis of the lungs, according to the cable reports.
My last days were nothing but torment
when the cancer had spread to my entire body.
My son who had himself called Kaiser Wilhelm
refused me morphine out of hatred.
The only thing he agreed to
was for the guard not to have to stand at my door
when the man could stand the screaming no longer.
This was how my son was preparing himself
before the great war
where the enemy was to be refused mercy
and the widows’ lamenting be endured.
We tried to reach China
via the Northwest Passage
under the command of Hugh Willoughby.
But the ship froze fast.
We heard the ice rear up in the dark
and the planking groan and shatter.
It took several moments for the gale
to turn us into statues of ice.
I myself am standing with one hand on the wheel,
the other raised, as if it had halted time.
I can lend you eyes of ice.
I was one of those who were lashed
to the muzzles of the cannons
for our part in the struggle for liberation,
that which they called the Sepoy Rebellion.
The balls that smashed us to smithereens
continued on through the years
knocking piece by piece off their empire.
The last thing I saw was the British flag
that had already lost its red and blue –
on its way to becoming a fluttering rag,
white as oblivion.
According to an Australian myth
singing beings passed over the earth
and gave names to the mountains and watercourses,
to the kangaroo and likewise to mankind –
to everything which thereby came to exist.
As a long-standing teacher of philosophy
I view the matter differently,
especially since death took Maud from me.
In that case other, silent beings follow
in the singing ones’ tracks through existence
and gather up all the names again.
The given names are ripped from the trees
which then no longer are trees,
are torn from houses and rivers and love
which thereby cease to exist.
Adam van Duren (c.1487– c.1532) Düren is a small town near Cologne Van Duren was a masterbuilder and stonemason. He worked at Linköping Cathedral, before travelleing to Denmark, where he worked in Elsinore and at the fortified castle of Glimmingehus in East Scania before being commissioned to work on restoring parts of Lund Cathedral. Both locations were part of the Danish kingdom at the time. His last task was renovating the bases of columns in Lund Cathedral, where he also sculpted an ass that had collapsed under its burden. The text is hard to read but probably in Danish, not Swedish (which would not rhyme): ‘Den maa vel et æsel være, some tager mer’ end den kan bære. 1527’ (A stupid ass a man must be who loads himself too heavily) – probably an ironic comment on himself.
Glimmingehus is my work,
as is the chapel of Linköping Cathedral
where I captured the night’s starry vault.
Like the Creator I abhorred drawings –
the world does not exist before the world.
But before being swallowed by the drain of history
I came to realise my vanity
and carved into the base of a column
a relief of an ass brought down by its burden.
The medieval hall church at Vamlingbo, Gotland, has a set of murals on its northern wall, one of which depicts the Archangel Michael weighing the soul of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (Henry the Exuberant). He died without an heir.
On the wall of Vamlingbo church
the archangel is weighing my soul.
My scale pan has room for an upper body
topped by an imperial crown.
Imps are constantly pressing it upwards.
In the opposite scale pan the devil has stuffed
my wars, intrigues and breaches of faith,
for good measure – the massacre in Pavia.
He also weighs down the rim with his foot.
Added to my own scale pan is fortunately
all the wealth I have made over to the church.
But heaviest is probably my vow of chastity
and thereby the cluster of unborn children.
I believe that it is by forgoing
that the soul attains its weight.
Between the pines sea is flickering
by amphitheatre ruins.
The air is all crickets and rosemary –
the empire has just been overthrown.
On the block of capital in the sand
the stone acanthus has sprouted green foliage.
As when you suddenly existed in my life.
Dreamt I lay on a marble slab
at the centre of an anatomical theatre.
Men dressed in black with broad-brimmed hats,
taken from a painting by Rembrandt,
were in the process of opening my rib-cage.
Those crowding round up there in ring upon ring,
leaned forward so as to see.
They gave a gasp
when one of the black figures lifted up my heart
and pointed to how it was still beating.
I also felt how my lips were moving
forming words that refused to surrender.
