ETHOS OF THE DUTCH
for R.I.
We ran
as fast we could—
wij liepen zo snel aangezien wij konden.
The house,
the houses—
het huis, de huizen.
That night
cut land in two. The waters
cut the land.
Full moon.
First of high spring tides.
Waters spilled
into waters. Waters
didn’t notice where waters
stopped
and land began.
Didn’t notice
dykes, rocky coastlines.
The house, the houses.
We slept
until waters woke us—
wij sliepen.
Church bells rang ahead
of hands,
the waters churning
time all their own.
Clang: there was no night.
Clang:
there were no days.
Where minutes
were
was water.
Stavenisse: waters carried farms
into the village.
Farmers, barns,
the cattle—
blinkered between terror
and grace—
they swept the village
like a parade,
then swept beyond.
Left what they touched
in ruins.
Left water. Only those who live
by seas
can understand this cruelty, crueler
than fire.
At least at Herculaneum
disaster preserved
what it destroyed.
This: a shadow
puppet of someone running.
This:
shadow of a baby sleeping—
schaduw van een babyslaap.
Here
there were no shadows.
North Sea waters split our land.
Took its shadows
with them.
Didn’t notice
where land began,
as emotion, at its most disastrous,
doesn’t notice
decisions preceding it.
My decisions—these were stones
the waters rushed.
And what is this:
little man in a paddle boat,
inkblot
on floodpage.
Paddling
across the boulevards of Noordwijk.
If decisions were stone
then what this little man,
and what his options:
fleeing the new geography,
dying in it.
As the sea returned
to sea,
we rose like Venus.
With headscarves,
Persian lambs. A pocketbook.
Like these were needed
where we’d been:
like these were needed
here.
This coastline nearly familiar,
these stones
we may or may not before
had stumbled on,
ons verloren dorp—
which remind us of our lost village.
Het geven. Het uiting
geven.
And what of learning.
Fleeing
where.
Little inkblot lost
in floodlights:
soon there will be tall windows.
A black curtain,
a white curtain.
Curtain of lemon yellow.
PEARL Roman insula. Cubit of cubits, cucking stool, streams of meat honeycombing from one apartment to next and next. Cornell boxes dominoed and stacked as in the reign of Hadrian but enough opening onto the Atlantic, enough dropping over a world’s edge to warrant misnomer. On the long azimuth, tankers and riggers buttoned across the misty dimity like all that blue might be unopened. Their neighbor, there, was Pearl. Lugubrious Pearl, remembering Pearl, and shuffling. Something like a smile trembled her face without reference to smile’s cause, giving the impression of responses less arbitrary than prescient or delayed. Did Pearl play bridge with them? Is this how Pearl played? Bidding on hands long finished, losing hands before she held them— and the Atlantic beyond them, playing solitaire. Slapping jacks across the beach, reshuffling. The next morning I ran from the dunes. Flinch of coir steps already blazing. In the apartment next to theirs, Pearl’s face already smiling. I loved Pearl, least glamorous of my grandmother’s friends. Pearl loved me. Smiled. Even before I told her about the jetty. The whale in the jetty’s rocks.
They said beach house, more like
SAFE IN THE LAZARETTO
Before Elisabeth was a saint, she was a princess.
Daughter of the king of Hungary. At thirteen, wife of Thuringian prince.
Did Hungary make her think of hunger, did Thuringia make her think thuringer, some other sausage—
At the summit of a silver mountain stood her castle.
At the foot of which she built a hospital, against her family’s wishes.
Hospital for the hungry. Did she shinny paths by foot, bramblegowned, stain
of bramble berry?
How in shinny to bear the bread for which she would be venerated.
At the foot of her mountain. The hungry languishing with the leprous, the pestilent, the tired and sad.
She gave bread like flowers to ballerinas. Rye upon rye, pumpernickel and golden semmeln.
No one, in silvershadow, went hungry.
Save those who chose: the hunger over bread.
The first miracle was this: husband-prince peeking beneath her mantle, to see what she was carrying,
with what so heavy.
And the bread—graubrot, pumpernickel, semmeln— turned to roses.
The last miracle: Saint Elisabeth, saint of the Hungry, tramps and child dying, lying in a lazaretto not her own.
Vienna, Sisters of Saint Elisabeth.
The precious clerestory. What left of her. What hunger of years not taken:
a skull bedecked in princess crown. Skull’s maxilla carved to scallops where teeth would be.
Scallop of toothless bone, the egg and dart. Where teeth might sink: Elisabeth’s own luminous femurs,
sceptre of princess and of saint. Where tongue would be, silver sliver on velvet crimson.
For what did you hunger. For whom dying. How long will she gnaw her own legs down, safe in the lazaretto?