by W. G. Sebald
Didsbury
Sunday was fed
Up to the teeth
With church bells
Summer hats
Gardening
Birds were squabbling
Over Lord knows what
Among the withered
Chestnut blossom
The presbyter went
To his May devotions
And it took
A long time
To get dark
Before it did
The birds made
A din
In the trees
Giulietta’s Birthday
The French windows
Are open still
As if in the theatre
People wait
On the colors of the carpet
In the cadence of dusk
Irony it is said
Is a form of humility
Glass in hand
They come and go
Stop still and expect
The metamorphosis of hawthorn
In the garden outside
Time measures
Nothing but itself
In the courtyard of a monastery in Holland
My name escaped me
Early in life according to Scott
Swift had acquired the habit
Of celebrating his birthday
In dejection
One leaves behind one’s portrait
Without intent
Time Signal at Twelve
for Lejzer Ajchenrand
His eyes
Home in
On the real
There is
Skulduggery
Afoot
A raven alights
At God’s ear
Tidings he brings
Of the battlefield
Father has gone to war
The monk from Melk
Sleeps in his quiet grave
The snow
Falls on his house
If no one asks him
He knows
But if someone asks him
He knows not
When the Weisers
Will meet
Something not a soul
Has ever seen
Children’s Song
for little Solveig
Fieldwards goes the day
Mildew grows in the garden
Measles cover the man
Like a thousand butterflies
Fieldwards goes the day
Long long ago
Studded with stars was the sky
A thousand butterflies
Come from the fields is a day
A coachman stands at the bone-house
Holding in his hands
The thousand butterflies
Votive Tablet
Weary of always
the same trees and
a country far from crossed
the legionnaire rests
in fancy’s meagre holding
Revolving around him by turns
his life and a bloom of tobacco
smoked by the wayside
The hammered out sections
show him whenever he moves
which of his organs
alas are sick
Cheerful after all
humbly sat on his shield
he bids us good day
the one-eyed
king of the blind
Legacy
Our memories are quite similar
but pickled alive
in a poison which
accompanies objects too
as a part of this emptiness
The heartening message
that Pythagoras once
would listen to the stars
barely comes down to us now
Then let us hope
our children are learning
to dance in the dark
Sarassani
With borrowed voices
the ventriloquist renders
others’ pipe-dreams
A gentleman disguised
as a moth pulls
tropical birds from a hat
The gaudiest parrot
weighs a memorized
word destiny
in his hand
As accustomed dupes
the local fowls
sit in the cheap seats
thrilling to the da capo
Day’s Residue
Dialectically thrashed out campaigns
and drafts from days
pending wasted battles
Like every evening
the set task is left
undone in the sandpit
Heeding a dubious silence
I sleep at night
with my ear to the ground
Its distant sounds
spell out
the lessons of a lighter world
Border Crosser
My beard grows overnight
every time
like a dead man’s
I have even begun
to speak in foreign tongues
roaming like a nomad in my own
town weighing the witch’s
thaler in my hand
It would seem to be time
to apply to the outworks
and register what
we have forgotten
Once there
given the superior outlook
my poor sedentariness
will pass
Lay of Ill Luck
In honor of my canny schoolmate
and god of wonders
I had promised a
Chinese fable
In crow’s-feet characters
the black bird
translated itself
nimbly to my page
The little vixen however
escaped and tumbled
in the grass and all
but laughed herself to death
So all I have left
is this monosyllabic
creature on my shoulder
Memorandum of the Divan
The mightiest however
seem those kings
who have never lived
Even today
they tempt us
on tours
to Soliman’s garden
on a horse
with clipped wings
To comfort the bereaved
it is advisable that reports of such trips
be prepared in advance
For it will often have proved
far too lovely to return
in any calculable future
Il ritorno d’Ulisse
Returning from a lengthy trip
he was astonished to find
he had strayed to a country
not his place of origin
For all his encounters in scattered spots
with the black paper hearts of men
shot by the arquebuse
his bow-and-arrow story
did not happen
Then there was Penelope’s
Castilian grandmother
blocking his entry at the garden gate
wordless and busy with embroidery
Sure, the grandchildren
are smiling in the background
apparently better disposed
towards foreigners
Their furtive hopes
still almost too small
for the naked eye
(But the idea is good
and the noise far away
even the building)
For a Northern Reader
Until the light has
failed as if bereft
the white mist
barely infiltrating
the trees
and as if they were painted
on a green landscape the animals
descending to their black shelters
come to a standstill
at the edge of our gaze
resolute
half his journey done
our ailing neighbor too
pauses
reckoning the distance left
Florean Exercise
The band was playing
and singing a little Turkish
marching song, with ensigns
shouldered they filed out
onto the plain at their ease
to where their ships lay
concealed beneath the cliffs
Their camp has long
been abandoned the soldiers
long ago returning to an older
post in a different time
But in Northamptonshire
their legacy has remained
green acanthus and orchards
houses inhabited still
by the Roman gaze
Guarding what once
was brought here
safely from afar
the Dardanian gods
Scythian Journey
Faced with the deep shadows
of the mountains of growing darkness
we had to break our journey
Making ourselves at home
high in the canopy of the forest
with the birds and fishes
Discussing the dragging winter
and maybe blowing a tune
on the Berecyntian horn
Savoring our dawdling
the poor Penates
smile among themselves
Saumur, selon Valéry
The beginners have concluded
an exercise in the accomplishment
of elaborate figures
as part of their training
in advanced impromptus
Abandoned now
the sand-track curves
into the lengthening shadows
Then, slipping through subito
from some other place an apparition
crosses our field of vision
at an astonishingly measured tread
Démonstration, Messieurs,
the zenith of my art,
riding, at a walk, and
that without flaw
or flourish
Says almost imperceptibly
bending down towards us
prior to vanishing
at the other side
Chiron the old centaur
L’instruction du roy
The real disaster
so they say are the consolations
the garde bourgeoise
in the republic of our dreams
Repetition once mere play
a five-finger exercise suddenly
a repertorial must
for intractable pupils
To cheer people up
they shift the scenes now and then
in our moral institutions
The mountain backcloth sinks
into the waves and time sheds
its skin every year
Out of sorts in the stalls
the Troubadour beholds
the panoptic spectacle while
poised at the entrance
Malatesta forks out for his ticket
Festifal
Setting:
On the Sandwich Islands
the Dictaean Grotto
Personae:
Basil the Rainmaker
and the coiled polar dragon
Plot:
Somnia, terrores magicos,
miracula, sagas, nocturnos
lemures portentaque Thessala
Intermezzo:
Acts of negligence in accordance
with relative beauty
strength or wit
ex. gratis: The plump Etruscan,
the ivory flute
and Latin song
aut:
Proteus sub aqua submersus
putting ugly cattle to pasture
aut etiam:
The Sphinx
fleeing toward Libya
Final Tableau:
Victorious Basil
earns the sobriquet Fifty
Analysis:
Salomo Schellenkönig the skilled
basket weaver counts his coppers
Balance:
A small
fortune
Pneumatological1 Prose
Recently seen
in the vicinity of Flore
Northants, the rhinoceros
appeared this morning
in my garden
With a sly look albeit somewhat
nonplussed it stood in the herbs
wreaking as it shifted its weight
from one foot to the other
considerable havoc
The animal is a victor
the elephant’s mortal foe
for when he comes upon it
the beast will charge headfirst
between its front legs
They also say
the rhinoceros
is quick joyful and
lusty too
Odd to say it did not retire
to the bushes after its wont
but with its head arrogantly
cocked on one side ascended
skywards in a gaily embroidered
Californian moored balloon2
A monotheistical
creature it would seem
while the elephant
as Pliny tells us
is clever and just
and worships the sun
and the moon
1. Pneumatology: Geisterlehre (Germ.), or Doctrine of Inflatability.
2. Large and very handsome flying and sailing device constructed by Messrs. H. and C. Artmann, Royal Engineers.
Comic Opera
The program enlists the turqueries
of a newly lapsed century
a potpourri with bells and cymbals
orchestrated obscenities
Masked players swell
the plot in a green theatre
their true faces overwritten
Rather than greater virtue
the happy ending proposes
more trivial vices
The hedges rustle with applause
and the bygone ladies
of the court return
below the lawns
Back to reading
cubist
novels
Timetable
Grown sheepish
by morning I study
the grounds of my coffee
At midday I cut
a slice for myself
from the hollow pumpkin of summer
And not until dark do I risk again
the Cretan trick
of leaping between the horns
Unexplored
Great-grandfather
in his gay jacket
casting a horoscope
A perfect
heptagram omitting
the malefic houses
Those white areas
photoset and printed
in my historical atlas
Elizabethan
As you know
the owl was only
a baker’s daughter
And Sheikh Subir
a professor expelled
from Persia
Baroque Psalter
After numerous
proselytizing expeditions
to Paris
Geneva Smyrna and
Constantinople
he was burned at the stake
in Moscow
Cold Draught
Surrounded by German
mothers and conscript
sons homeward on the
Bundesbahn: the leaning
tower by Landsberg
the murder at Hotel Hahn
the Buchloe cheese factory
the lunatics of Kauf beuren
the abbey school windows
the abyss of childhood
And in the dark
lifting her skirts
Sai
nt Elizabeth
stepping daintily
over glowing ploughshares
Near Crailsheim
Precisely undulated fields
little globular trees
sculpted and dark green
pedantically aligned
rows of maize
Thereabove to the west
God’s pleasure
pink candyfloss
from the recent funfair
Mumbling the enigma of their
crosswords pensioners sit
on the express, limbs benumbed
in the quicksilver of their angst
Already the shadows are smoking
in the valley of Jehoshaphat
Here comes the railwayman
his lamp bouncing on his bib
Poor Summer in Franconia
The poster in the village shop
recalls the yellowed terror
of the Colorado beetle
In the backroom behind her
the shopkeeper’s children sit glued
to the nation’s wooden eye
Windfalls lie leaden in the garden
and blue in the crayfish-stream
flow the suds from the washing machine
The Moor on the hill
peeps from an American tank