Free Albrecht Dürer and me by David Zieroth

on the occasion of visiting Auden’s grave
    somehow I don’t expect sighing evergreens
    or cruel April’s birds tuning up their notes
    or the autobahn’s whine beyond the church’s
    sweet-cream-pastry-coloured plaster walls
    though I recognize the iron cross and plaque
    labelling the deceased as poet and man of letters
    and somehow the ivy’s dense entanglement
    surprises me as do wilting winter pansies
    on top of the small rectangle of the plot itself
    (how can it hold such long, grand bones?)
    and a two-pence copper coin lying atop moss
    that says he is loved by someone from home
    and those admirers from other lands (like me)
    know better than to swipe this little token
    even as I feel its melancholic foreignness
    enter my thumb and vibrate with an eagerness
    to claim the wrinkled poet as my own
    yes, I know how men slide daily under earth
    and what remains of them upside stays briefly
    before it too leaves like wind or highway noise
    while calamity clots nearby, one hamlet away
    even as that woman in her red coat crosses
    a green field, happy black terrier leaping up
    to her hand, as a crow settles his wings on pale
    winter stubble, and an old man in a crushed hat
    posts a letter at a yellow box – and may a reply
    come sooner than he expects from a grandson
    he loves to praise as only a free man can praise
    but likely it’s a bill, what must be paid
    in a certain period before penalties apply
    and debts accrue and demands mount
    and a day passes in which he fails to relish
    this heaven-side of grass, neglects the glory
    in birdsong! – and in men whose songs rise
    so smoothly from their natures we forget
    how both ease and fine form came to pass
    out of a morning’s work in the low house
    with green decorative siding not far from
    his grave, a domicile easy to pass by without
    a murmur of wonder – though the German words
    under his photo leave me squinting, envious
    of those who know more than I, who knew him
    as a neighbour, summer visitor to Kirchstetten
    on a back road bordered by willows ready to bud
    from soggy forest floor with leaves faint for now

in Duino
    narrow roads off the autobahn
    offer tour buses no place to park
    should passengers want
    to see where Rilke slept
    Princess della Torre e Tasso’s gilded
    family portraits of past aristocrats
    staring down, uncomprehending
    I step onto a balcony overlooking
    the Gulf of Trieste, notice no angels
    though commercial oyster beds
    at the mouth of the Isonzo River
    provide a symmetry the poet
    may have admired from his cliff path
    I am thinking a trace of gravitas
    might remain on this stone
    balustrade he may have touched
    (or pounded) and where
    in three languages is written
    on its limestone lip the command
    not to lean over, which I heed
    Apollo beams down to warm
    my thoughts again, so once more
    I wonder how the poet saw from here
    â€˜wind full of cosmic space’
    what remains for me white cliffs
    and blue sea, curve of the gulf
    and sunlight calling one wave
    to appear just as another dips and
    disappears without any ‘endlessly
    anxious hands’ framing
    what cannot so easily pass away

Nicholas Lanier, 1628
, by Anton van Dyck
    his long nose and wary look, cocked
    right elbow, left hand casual on a rapier
    poking back from the sparkle on its hilt
    and the brightest mark? his wide forehead
    below an abrupt line where brown curls
    shine and announce pride, head’s width
    of blue sky softly clouded, sun-streak burning
    above a background of fake ruins
    and the focus? Lanier’s lips, straight and stern
    ready to sneer, yet showing beneath refinement
    how many times he has been bruised
    (note the hint of green at the left temple)
    hairs on his red moustache curving up above
    his pointed beard ready and set to quiver
    he sat seven days for van Dyck, and both
    clearly relished that wide swath of rich cape
    tumbling down from his left and out of which
    bulge his arms in red-striped fabric
    such a