Book 1 Poem 3
after Lutz Seiler
In which the fictional poet Sophie Poppmeier addresses the real poet Lutz Seiler; the
fictional translator Jason Argleton salutes Seiler’s real translator, Tony Frazer.
Postwar snow on the Mozart Bridge today.
I thought of your poem. A dead dog whirled,
bobbing on the flood tide of the Danube,
its old song carrying me eastwards. Easter-
tide: we sport ears torn from domestic rabbits,
another postwar story surviving
for the Mayday parade of potemkin bonnets.
The past stares out from the empty bandstand.
But memory plays a marching anthem,
limping along with a dead childhood
on its leash. The Russians are coming.
With their sainted cosmonauts and their poison
umbrellas, isotopes hidden in toy bunnies. Under
the desks, the class of ’81 hid, reading pre-war graffiti
and picking at scabby knots of chewing gum. A
bottle of strontium milk and only 6 seconds to wolf it.
No such luck: we climbed out again, stretching
into freedom that was fortified at its fraying edges,
some line drawn across the local mountains
from the songs that gathered around the skirts of the statues.
If you had not existed you would still have made me up!
And today, an April river-wind would still rip from the East.
A swan ruffles its feathers, buries its beak in blue, points
to where my poems sink like a sack of drowning puppies.
after Lutz Seiler
In which the fictional poet Sophie Poppmeier addresses the real poet Lutz Seiler; the
fictional translator Jason Argleton salutes Seiler’s real translator, Tony Frazer.
Postwar snow on the Mozart Bridge today.
I thought of your poem. A dead dog whirled,
bobbing on the flood tide of the Danube,
its old song carrying me eastwards. Easter-
tide: we sport ears torn from domestic rabbits,
another postwar story surviving
for the Mayday parade of potemkin bonnets.
The past stares out from the empty bandstand.
But memory plays a marching anthem,
limping along with a dead childhood
on its leash. The Russians are coming.
With their sainted cosmonauts and their poison
umbrellas, isotopes hidden in toy bunnies. Under
the desks, the class of ’81 hid, reading pre-war graffiti
and picking at scabby knots of chewing gum. A
bottle of strontium milk and only 6 seconds to wolf it.
No such luck: we climbed out again, stretching
into freedom that was fortified at its fraying edges,
some line drawn across the local mountains
from the songs that gathered around the skirts of the statues.
If you had not existed you would still have made me up!
And today, an April river-wind would still rip from the East.
A swan ruffles its feathers, buries its beak in blue, points
to where my poems sink like a sack of drowning puppies.
