Free Albrecht Dürer and me by David Zieroth Page B

smile
    when I open wide the window
    and then walk out, locate his home
    and high in a circle, his bearded face
    a Pisces with Leo rising
    hard to see, just another pale
    fresco, yet strength to outlast
    generations who trudged
    this slope back to when
    the nearby city wall held
    against enemy knives
    and where now I meander
    pushing up along the stones
    May grass high and red with
    poppies as if from shed blood
    and also a fragrance I catch
    and fail to identify until at last
    I see small dangling lemons
    not quite globes, not quite suns
    and think of starry ideas, just begun
    his, all earth-changing, my own
    no bigger than a brain’s sphere
    or a handful of this warm soil
    to sail home with
    onto a cold coast
    no new moons to discover there
    no orbs to name even as the lenses
    I look through rearrange me
    daily from fuzzy to clear
    in case a heaven swims by

pushing toward the Alps
    I can’t believe they will open and reveal
    passes because from an hour away
    though cloud-speckled and so
    somehow soft, they’re a wall
    we keep driving toward, Volvo
    unperturbed by the road rising
    to where limestone breaks and piles
    and leaves white points in the sky
    summits subject to the
whap
    of a climber’s ice axe far above rivers
    we roll across, their gravel bottoms
    almost white, scoured by rushes
    of glacial flood while mountain light
    slants into an evening’s yellow
    and shadows elongate for dusk
    as a buttery castle floats past
    these peaks remain unfazed
    even by Zeus-fuelled lightning bolts
    as if their true trick is not to think
    not to have any apparatus with which
    to think, their solid fame and
    eye-glad beauty never knowing
    that one who passes below is visited
    by the flash of a former motoring
    (with frayed parents that Sunday)
    buried under massing decades and
    arriving with a pang, alive like rain
    fleeing the windshield

in Kapfenstein
    in Schloss Kapfenstein I discover I have forgotten
    how to dance – at my daughter’s wedding
    under the portrait of a long-nosed Austrian
    in blue silk, descendant of Turk fighters
    I stumble and step on delicate feet: three women
    attempt to lead, and fail, though we enjoy anyway our
    pleasure at arms up not in time with lederhosen music
    and along the Danube, I find bewilderingly
    I have forgotten how to ride a bike, wobbling
    wildly, almost running into ambulatory tourists
    and those other trim walkers from nearby vineyards
    stepping along, catching breezes, in this particular
    incarnation watching barges bearing down
    under black, red, gold faded German flags
    what everyone says cannot be forgotten
    I forget and blame being unbalanced on
    the hammer of intercontinental flight but know
    somehow it’s otherwise, as in the dream
    night before the wedding: fighting off men
    with moustaches and crowbars who are breaking
    glass walls of my house, one man among them
    attaching explosives so no hope remains
    of driving him off when he turns to me and says
    â€˜Why are you so invested in this structure?’
    or perhaps more like the dream the night
    following, having passed through a father’s tears
    and into another beginning, when I am hoeing, really
    cutting the ground, gruelling work, and then
    an even greater effort is required: to wear
    a bulky x-ray unit strapped to my chest so everyone
    sees what I am feeling, that I’ve worked hard
    at becoming soft with rewards of love’s
    continuance, joy’s release

dislocation
    child takes the hand of an older brother
    leads him into a house where kind-faced
    violinist reaches his instrument down
    and before the two boys begin
    to sing to his vibrato, the child
    turns back to remaining
    family members clustered outside
    tells them to ready their hankies
    so sweet will be the music made
    for the father, for whom especially
    these songs are sung
    my own damp
    pillow awakens me in a foreign bed
    where I wonder if this dream
    arrives only in dislocation, to uncover
    how a constancy remains
    and