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hitchhiking one winter in the
day-day-air
Deutsche Demokratische Republik
I knew the smell of phenolated water but it would
not have led to the
Sarmatia
Schattenland
of
Johannes Bobrowski
or
Peter Huchel’s
Sorabia
Lusatia
places that had use to be, lived on now only in
curt words I had yet to read, would not have gotten
me to the ruin of any
Garten des Theophrast
in
Ostberlin
or out on the
Mark Brandenburg
a poem that Huchel had dedicated to his son
which I redid in American the other day
at noon when the white fire of
poetry goes dancing on the urns
I want you to remember
son
the men that planted conversation
here like trees
the garden is dead
and breathing is harder for me now
I
want you to retain this time
Theophrastus
used to walk right here
to rich the soil with tanning bark
to baste up the oaks he had cutted
an
olive has cracked the old wall
and talks on in the hot afterdust
they have issued an
order to
rout out the roots of it
no more light
or protection for what gave shade
on finding a gloss of it by
Hans Dieter Zimmermann
Theophrastus the gardener pupil
of Aristotle is physician to
nature but cannot be of any help
the conversations and the trees are to
be destroyed without remorse
foliage
that provided shade is itself
without protection and he begs his son
to keep a memory of who planted
the trees the conversations and whose work
others are bent on undoing
it is
an appeal to us to remember those
that like Huchel the editor planted
conversations like trees only to see
their hard fruitful work cleared away by the
underhanded fruitless bureaucrats of
the German Democratic Republic
later
returned to Zimmermann, to the sad pretty lines
too, I felt ambiguity in them, dubiety in me, had
they had much to do with what had grown out of
the
lyceum
of Aristotle
where they walked to talk
on a path around
meaning the garden that the next regent to
peripatetic
school Theophrastus had left to it, innovator of
botany
esoteria
in the morning and
exoteria
in the afternoon
Antipater
had let the institution come to be in the early
term of
Alexander
when
Demosthenes
Diogenes
were living, Theophrastus not going down old until
two eighty-seven, the defeat to Rome not at all to
come soon, ambiguity, dubiety
sie gaben Befehl
to rout out a tree or the trees but who
no barbarian
at the Ilissus
and had Huchel written a
dramatic
poem
meinem Sohn
in role of Theophrastus
garden not to die
with the gardener
had they been peripatizing in the own backyard of
their regent as well, sowing talk like tree seed
where he put herbs
tot ist der Garten
Theophrastus or Huchel tells the son of one or the
other, would the nonagenarian Greek have willed
a dead one to the school, dead but for that doughty
olive it would seem and those leaves
still rich in a light
unfaded beauty
even though
sie gaben Befehl
to rout out in the past tense, why I made it a
perfect in my American reading, a dotard having
valetudinarian talk with a son well into middle
age might have referred to himself in the third
person
hier ging Theophrast
and Zimmermann read it so but the father the talker
is Huchel I have to think, idea and emotion are
strong, crowd what he ought to know
Sorabia or
Lusatia or
Mark Brandenburg a
garden of the north
having won honor with poetry the editorship of
Sinn und Form
in an inhumane pseudonation he gets
beschimpft
muted quarantined as traitor to the working man,
maybe on pained reflection he comes to see in the
phenolated rooms of the magazine a
Garten des Theophrast
now dead but in memory, an Athenian link that I
do not
no Antipaters
in the
day-day-air
no Aristotles
walking the fenland
he has
Bert Brecht
to guard the magazine and him awhile then
Becher
Seghers
Arnold Zweig
to spurn him, does Huchel think he might have
cultivated a real theophrastian garden in the time
the place of
Walter Ulbricht
not quite an Alexander that what he managed to do
in any way matched the conversations
where they walked to talk
on a path around
during a not too tyrannous moment of antiquity,
oh well he is leaving the garden, idea emotion will
outweigh whatever he may take to the
Nähe von Freiburg
of happier exile his time in the
day-day-air
zoo having made him a
dissident
to the foreign eye, heroic, tragic, who has reached
into an ancient golden moment for sanity, that eye
none too demanding of accurate data or poem truth
behind his sad pretty decorative lines
wenn mittags das weise Feuer
der Verse über den Urnen tanzt
which urns for what, no one has seemed to care,
even given ambiguity, dubiety, I do not much
either, what he underwent has earned the man the
poet latitude, a good end to life in
schönsten Winkel Deutschlands
in der Nähe von Freiburg
where a path goes in-
to the Black Forest
how could he be homesick Zimmermann had to ask
mir fehlen die wendischen Weiber
I miss Wend wenches
war seine Antwort
and Zimmermann knew what this meant, ah
the Wends the Slavic urinhabitants
of Mark Brandenburg haunt his poety
so to speak
the unfulsome landscape the
moors the lakes the fens the huge gray sky are
alive in it
and the humble the maids
and hired men serving out their time on
the land as they have done from eld to now
or up to the Nazis, war, Stalin
Zerstorungen
idea and emotion went into the planting of
Sinn und Form
anyway, more than some hope too I imagine, but did
the heart dream of Huchel return to the phenolated
rooms where conversation led only to the ear of a
Stasi
monitor man or was he remembering a beauty
full of hip and lip
who turned not to smile
like the one that worked along the battered thruway
and I often saw on my hitchhike
Wend wenches were the
poem he wanted
their garden never quite dead in
Sarmatia
Sorabia
Lusatia
beyond history like Theophrastus
et alii who walked
to talk to such ef-
fect that they achieved
peripeteia
and are still talking
on the path around |
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PETER HUCHEL’S POEM
Wenn mittags das weisse Feuer
Der Verse über den Urnen tanzt,
Gedenke, mein Sohn, Gedenke derer,
Die einst Gespräche wie Bäume gepflanzt.
Tot ist der Garten, mein Atem wird schwerer,
Bewahre die Stunde, hier ging Theophrast,
Mit Eichenlohe zu düngen den Boden,
Die wunde Rinde zu binden mit Bast.
Ein Ölbaum spaltet das mürbe Gemäuer
Und ist noch Stimme im heissen Staub.
Sie gaben Befehl, die Wurzel zu roden.
Es sinkt dein Licht, schutzloses Laub.
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