The Tower

Summary

Tour St.-Nicolas, Furnes

Earthed in. As if you rose there, climbing blind,

up to earth's outer skin, there in the sloping

beds of rivulets that from the groping

clots of darkness that reached up to find,

were slowly springing — dark through which your face

itself, as if in resurrection, presses,

and which you see, as if from its high place

of overhanging, from its precipices,

as it looms high over you, it plunged

and toppled headlong in the glimmering timbers.

In fear and dread, you know it; feeling simmers.

Oh, if it climbed, and like a bull were hung —:

but then you're taken from that narrow ending

by gusty light. Almost as if you're flung,

you see the skies once more here, blinding — blinding —,

but there, the useful depths, awake, attending,

and little Patinir-like days, all blending

at once, the hours side by side. There bound

right through them, bridges, each a leaping hound

that always tracks a trail that hasn't died —

that clumsy houses sometimes barely hide,

until its brightness, deep in the background

and hushed, wends through the brush and countryside.

Der Platz

Furnes

Willkürlich von Gewesnem ausgeweitet:

von Wut und Aufruhr, von dem Kunterbunt

das die Verurteilten zu Tod begleitet,

von Buden, von der Jahrmarktsrufer Mund,

und von dem Herzog der vorüberreitet

und von dem Hochmut von Burgund,

(auf allen Seiten Hintergrund):

ladet der Platz zum Einzug seiner Weite

die fernen Fenster unaufhörlich ein,

während sich das Gefolge und Geleite

der Leere langsam an den Handelsreihn

verteilt und ordnet. In die Giebel steigend,

wollen die kleinen Häuser alles sehn,

die Türme vor einander scheu verschweigend,

die immer maßlos hinter ihnen stehn.