Notes
penciled in the margins of a book
of the Dichtungen of George Trakl
How can I thank you B, for your ear,
your mind, your affection?
Some afternoons after we had given
kisses we would recline
against the hard bolsters in the little
inn reading and rewriting
my poems.
At first the idea of exchanging caresses
with an almost heavenly
Being had frightened me. I committed
little crimes so you would
Postpone this perilous happiness.
No one had told me that it was possible
to make love to a voice.
Only someone who has not shared such
love will condemn these
writings.
The toy train which brought us to the town
was so slow. It
stopped at every hamlet. Farm people got
on and off. There was
a car for their animals: lambs, pigs,
chickens. When it was very
slow we would become frantic with
impatience. We had so little
time to be together.
Outside the window of the inn were the
streets of the town, its
old houses. But if we watched hard
enough the scene would
change into a landscape of fields,
trees, a little lake and
mountains in the distance.
Horses went clip-clop down the cobbled
street. It was a blessing
there were so few autos and motorbikes.
There was a gilt-framed mirror on the
wall of the room. Why did
we see in it the reflection of only one
person?
The sound of rain in the window. The
sound of the wind. The
sound of the sun. Yes, even sunlight has
its sound though only
lovers are likely to hear it.
You were disgusted by the big
cockroaches that scuttled across
the floor until I convinced you they
carried secret messages. Our
postmen.
I always bought flowers to talk when
love had rendered us
silent.
Sometimes you would say, I can’t
remember who we are. I have
to look at the shoes on the carpet to
recall our names.
A strange ballet. The horizontal pas des
deux. Hands mimicking
the dancer’s feet. Your long hair is
your costume?
A bird struck the window with a thud and
fell into the street. It
was eager to join us but couldn’t see
the glass.
We read no more that day. There was
nothing the book could tell
us. Paolo and Francesca, you said. We
often heard faint footsteps
in the hall, not as heavy as those of
the inn servants. You said it
was the revenants who wanted to be with
us. You opened the
door but no one was there.
The inn servants seemed an honest lot
but it was just as well to
tip them a bit too much. I used the name
Reseguier but you
might have been recognized from your
pictures in the magazines.
There were porcelain basins and
pitchers, two of each, on the
stand and eider puffs in the bed, two
fat white pancakes on the
matrimonial.
There was a picture on the wall which I
couldn’t place, most
unusual for a village inn, not a
religious or hunting scene. It was
an abstract drawing in several colors. A
grid of little nearly
identical shapes connected by ink lines.
Perhaps an artist from
the city hadn’t been able to pay his
bill.
Sometimes, if you dozed, I would change
the time on your watch
that you always put on the bedside
stand. I knew you would
wake with a start and say it was time to
go home, he would be
waiting for your company at tea. There
were later trains on the
toy railroad.
Hot and cold weather, we went there for
nearly a year. Who is
using that room now? Perhaps a series of
lonely travelling
salesmen.
You must know that none of these things
may ever have
happened, that we imagined them. . . How
can we be sure it was
not all an illusion? Remember the
wineglass you dropped and it
shattered? We tried to get up all the
crumbs of glass but some
were too small and worked their way into
the fabric of the carpet.
They would prove we were there.
