Albrecht Dürer and me Read Free Page B

might
    remember if I stay one day more

above the Danube
    we climb in heat and humidity above the Danube
    and a once-upon-a-time town’s constricted streets
    the way up paved with slanted stone soon
    a path, elevation gain severe but
    breezes increase, and below becomes
    picturesque as we crawl upward to ruins:
    this castle held Richard the Lionheart hostage
    on his homeward-bound Third Crusade
    when these cream-coloured stones shone new
    and the tiny space for prisoners –
    iron bars across an opening in rock, a cavity
    reflecting, we hope, short height then of men –
    gives a chill amid August’s fiercest sun
    we linger on what we perceive as parapets
    where others loll as well, some eager
    to commune with ghosts
    and at this moment we look west and discover
    on a distant headland what looks like another
    schloss
, though not a ruin, which even at this remove
    glows, its walls firm, cupolas secure, and called
    we learn, the monastery of Göttweig
    where Benedictines maintain themselves and
    keep the sun shining as well as it does
    such thoughts occur in a foreign land
    where all is brightly new – and why travel if not
    to grow into the unknown where we’ll hit upon
    what transforms us, as bread is changed
    when eaten if prayers are offered beforehand
    as age is held back from the listener by a story
    on the way down I pick up a whitened piece
    of wood or bone, hard to tell which, but certainly
    weightless, and I do not believe such a thing’s
    a relic or a mystery or even a worthy souvenir
    but for a moment I hold it, rub it close to me
    thinking to link back through eras to marauders
    who appeared on the river, and to villagers
    who prepared wine and meat for their feast
    and prayed among families after they left
    that the devils would not return again before winter

in Hallstatt
    red hair of the guide leads us down
    into earth mined for twenty-seven centuries
    though only we and our recent progenitors
    are tourists, all earlier visitants came
    for salt, their individual stories lost or
    merged with legends from the Celt
    cemetery exhumed nearby in this valley
    shadowed by peaks beyond peaks and
    steep walls where nothing clings but myth
    had I once been one of those who wore
    gold bracelets on his biceps, and if one
    such prince should touch me now, will I
    know, the shiver of eternal recognition
    shocking me backwards out of these
    protective overalls all visitors must wear
    a gaggle of us turning into a platoon
    in red outfits, same for me as for
    the Japanese and South Africans
    will I walk into these depths older than
    possible to grasp, even with the dark
    illuminated by the guide’s torch and words
    and not return to reasoning as a city-
    walking, siren-cringing, magic-missing
    modern but find beneath these mass clothes
    bronze body armour, and in my hand the
    amber-embellished hilt of an iron sword
    that led me over more than mountains
    later we eat fish from the crystal lake
    and under the calm of local wine speak of
    the last war here, of a mother who carried
    to her grave hope her missing son might
    yet return, and then I sleep, my femurs not
    unlike those in the close-by charnel house
    until its flanking church’s pre-dawn bells
    announce I must begin again the work
    of unearthing who I might yet become

crying in the Belvedere
    young woman quite near
    presses against young man
    black hair dishevelled
    ragged mouth twisted in tears
    pushed open on his chest – is she
    reseeing
The Kiss
, the way it pulsed
    (so unlike kitschy postcard’s gold message)
    or was it Napoleon on his silver
    steed, crimson cape twirling over
    forward thrust of conquered soil?
    did a different draft of history
    creep near and enter her?
    in upper rooms von Ribbentrop
    forced two men from Belgrade
    to capitulate, sign Axis papers
    in presence of Italian and Japanese
    government men supercilious
    in their self-regard and disrespect
    for two seized Slavs, whose people
    would repudiate their