Birdlike an old man's voice, a croaking, a cavilling
trembling words between collapsed lips
syllables half-swallowed, nearly swallowed too
like his dentures his name, the place, walls, chimneys
everything that is, was. Charred gaps in memory.
Where construction cranes now joggle along hugely with their single arms
catching the eye in the blue of the sky, swallowed by clouds
and let in sideways into foundation pits where before they were sunk
into ditches, where no grave: bits of corpses and burnt hair
the singed and easily inflammable leavings
reduced to ashes of a life almost completely consumed.
And his voice lowered too, memento voice without prejudice
and the train, so very fast, so empty
even the fading reservations, seats not claimed by -
hurried bookings, regroupings of time, luggage, circumstances
and harmless-looking travellers, quick to change lanes
between east and no-more-forever with the route realigned
quick on the uptake, which really means: adaptability
overcoming the ice age with a cold shock
which is also a matter of precaution. (A research project)
Precaution equals caring minus human kindness.
Fish snap at their food with cold-lipped mouths
coldly is how time passes into the distance in Dresden
but where the stones have been gathered and numbered,
where no stone on another and everything turned
over and over the great corpse carried off, on which nothing
where every cloud legitimately shifts the rest
in nameless close combat, and art hangs on every floor
to give pleasure, there's just so much, the artists
very open-handed, obsessed by painting, mauve-coloured canvases
generously hung above the beds for the hotel guests, joyously free
very sensibly changed their trade with a good nose for business
so that now every drawing of breath, every stone (carefully signed, numbered)
recorded in a monograph of having breathed out, of expiring
if that's not saying too much already
shifting of clouds above ruins
among confused faces, bowed beneath the building cranes,
that the dead pile into towers so that it stands upright.
(What ruins, what epoch, numbered, signed, by whom?)

So when the sun then broke through, hot and overwhelmingly bright
blazoned like an artificially waxed apple, and the artists
very open-handed, obsessed by painting with mighty sweeps of the brush
painting of clouds in water colours, a brightened horizon
now with frayed mauve-coloured edges
the express train, fast and no stopping
what once cut life into slices
floating now subject to the state of the economy and the weather
it can happen at times that the locomotive of a train
completely as though ridden down, run into the ground by Russians
interrupted service: smoothed over with politely embarrassed apologies
how then the ball of the sun as we were heading west
how next to us immense in our section of window
the evening sun a ball rolling west
how we plumped ourselves pertly into the pillows
this is our due, this sun, art above the bed, this train
so empty, so silent, so accompanied by the sun.
Dresden is covered in cloud as well
behind us (seen historically)
yet the idea of weather of any colour
sitting on banks of clouds, tickling clouds, pillows of clouds,
stuffing unleavened bread with the crust still warm
from which our stomachs, well, hard to digest
a single ellipse looked at historically
yet how the ball of the sun kept rolling away from the train to the left
for a whole half-an-hour as just as geography
how we slept so comfortably under the blanket of clouds.

English by Catherine Hales