taken across from the land
in the gloaming the river
rising at hightide
yet not recognised
like when the ebbtide after noon
lifts seaweed  up into the light
nests of algae
their oily gleam
like in the innards
of spanish paintings
like in the innards of the slow time
told by dunsink
like fish’n chips
hot in yesterday’s independent
at the station down by the river
where trains zip out
to stephen’s tower
to naples beach

briefly it dips into the cold rapid
of memory
bittered to bits while in flight
sour cloverleaf of good fortune
 

LISBON, IBIS 

pockmarks, pessoa, a scratching, on
oncewhite marble cobblestones
the eye’s snakelike flitting, cokeblack
the itching skin of verses, dragged here 
on ships, from india, macao, weeks
near driedcod boards, lungfulls of smoke
the jetties, the inwards life of the bird,
of the surf, this mare-or-less
of faded roofs, the quartergrief
of sootstained estrades, largo di carmo
something is scratching in the book, no person’s something.
 

SPRING IN EAST BERLIN 

pasternak’s whistles
from the watertower

velvet is flowing from boxes,
bodies are bolsheviking 

all journeys are mirrors:
springblind

three young plane trees
trussed up in supportive corsets 

- the walls?
angular labyrinthlets 
 

MINUSBERLIN (“MINUSBERLIN”)

shove the sun away
sounds a cinch
others are sitting
in coats made of smoke
tenuous voices cold
cocaigne
when the f
rige gets opened
light tumbles out
delphi for instance
in red neon
in front of the bridge
to the zoo that’s
expected that’s primeval
words are prior
to thought and afterwards
cunning angels
are there in the contours
miraculous sparklers on their
splints
 

POSTSCRIPT ON IRELAND 

still you are smoking
faded teabrown
photo burst apart like dublin
windrifled
      ancient abattoir
you’re smoking
battles
like that
maynight with its ample lips
at trinity college
the fishblack
youths
were climbing the gates
and hills
like tickling horsehair
where the skin ends
(chapelizod hill)
as we were turning off 
for temple bar
 

SEPTEMBER TAILBACK

variants of ghosts in the 
halfdark mottled with 
lightpoints, old wooden doors peeling at the mute
end of an affair, monceau’s traité des arbres: seven
volumes with five
hundred copperplate engravings, leaved
through copperleaves
from the period
…………….
the river and its wings
 

ANGEL OF SILENCE 

the rivers climb back into their sources
the ring of the rain
on the terrace’s tinny table
returns into the book
outlandish languages
meet you, wish to travel on
the fireorgan’s 
silent, the leaves, they’re yours,
curl up 
piled high 
the wine gleams
once more

in the garden
scratched 
into the copper tablets 
a rose from giverny 
three bridges from venice
five notes by rameau

for cäcilie glinz, 1915-1992