It's July, and who would kill for a woman
Now? It's so hot it's unreal. In the country:
A farmyard with some old plante-trees, thirty
In all. That's the age of the man who lives there,
A lovely guy, though he limps a bit in one
Leg, his left. Or so it would seem. Sometimes
He walks on one shoe. Whenever he thinks
About it he lies flat out on the floor, smashes
The watery mirror in the rain tank
Or turns his parents' photo on the sideboard
The other way round and stares silently into
Space. But now, as he looks up from the camp-bed
Where he's lolling - the morning already a-quake
With heat - on his forehead a couple of plasters still,
Now, at this very moment, as he looks
Towards the farmhouse, he sees the cherry orchard,
A cloud of noise, a swarm of starlings dropping
Into the trees, like grit. Is it a plague
Or a message? Is it significant, a new
Configuration? It hints at the branching of
Another reality into one's everyday life.
The starlings are starting to eat the cherries - they'll have
The trees stripped bare in no time. But Pornschlegel
The man has noticed nothing. He hears a motor
Mower drone, only the garden sprinkler
Hiss. Lethargic in the heat, sometimes
He spells his name. Soon he'll embark on his voyage.
Who would kill for a woman now? It's so hot.
He wanders into the room and yet another
Century. He's still able to fritter
Himself away in the familiar. 16th,
17th, he yawns (it's the day before the great
Heat, which will lie like a compress on the world),
18th century. He looks out of
The high window, sees the synagogue glitter.
The colour sweated by things seems mental to him:
Red of balcony flowers, blue of a patent
Leather shoe. The museum, floating on the
Afternoon, is an Ionic island,
Beautiful as a wreck from Paradise.
Inside, in half-light, the paintings and panels hang
As concrete as the images of a poem.
With all of this, Pornschlegel sometimes
Feels more unreal than what is portrayed. Sees
His foot dragging through the varnish of the
Parquet floor. He stretches his diaphanous
Hands before him: they are - still - his own.
Any moment now, other hands might
Appear in them. What's wrong with his physicality?
The fact that he's guarding shadows of paint (Cranach,
Memling, Patinir) is his daily bread.
He's just an attendant. But one portrait, which he
Worships, comes floating up in his dreams. It's Agnes
Sorel. And he knows who she looks like too. Portrayed by
Jean Fouquet as virgo lactans, she's an ivory
Skittle, hairless face and slim loins.
She's nature become idea and 'dame de toute beauté
Parée'. She makes him part of history.
And in the already more evening light that's falling
And falling through the dome, she's calling him
To herself. The glass cracks and the century's empty.
He shuffles across the floor as if through water.
Her voice, very high, almost a flute note and surely
Guarded by seraphim and cherubim, comes
Like a finger out of the paint. She beckons. He nods.
She lisps and he sees her tongue, knitting-needle
Thin - 'See me or I perish' - and he
Hears: 'Free me and inherit'. That he
Has to break the glass to see the glass.
He thrusts his pearl-white forehead into the case.
He's found stretched out and broken on the floor.
And outside it's even hotter, empty and dry.
Sleep shows him a man on the Left Bank.
It seems like a dream in a dream in a dream. It's a plain
With the sun above. It's there and sometimes not.
The man walks across fields, across gravel. Along
A wall with broken glass on top. Panting.
He is searching or intending something.
Then the path runs out and the ground gets boggy.
He finds his way in circles to himself,
His purpose becoming wound around him. He walks
Past roots, between the stumps of trees - as if someone
Had to cut them down to save his life.
Here a phantom is someone there a walker
Wearing calfskin boots, though now there's a feeling
He might be fleeing. By an orchard stands
A scarecrow, straw-white hair sees blackbirds off
To another world. Cars come driving across
The landscape. The man has disappeared in a trice,
Partially shielded by foliage. The site is cordoned
Off with palings and red-and-white tape. Someone
Starts measuring something. It's crawling with black uniforms.
Notes are taken and someone's digging too.
A hand which is raised white, like a faux pas
In a life, strikes every face dumb.
They've found an oil barrel, welded shut.
It's torched open. They bring a body bag -
Clammy, in the garden, Pornschlegel
Wakes. A catnap opens the doors of the dream.
He dabs his forehead. But the trees greet him,
Glasses throw out sparks. He smiles at phlox
And gladioli in the border. He tidies
Himself up in the pressure of the mirror.
He kick-starts his Vespa. He needs to buy an axe.
He was as simple as a carpenter.
He's anything but that now. In the course of events
He was visited in dreams and now he's starting
To believe that mumbo-jumbo of the
Body. His home is draughty, an Aeolian
Harp. The trees he has to cut down,
It breaks his heart. He loves Italian disco.
He says he's an island, la di la. They say
He speaks in metaphors. A man who could be
His brother says: 'He's been unbearable since
Our parents died. He's become unsociable,
An oddball'. He says he has an ever-changing
Effigy. He sings when he's sad.
La di la. La di la di la.

Translation by Francis R. Jones