(Basel, May 1998)

1. Der Triumph des Todes (after Pieter Breughel the Elder)

In The Triumph of Death, who's smiling? (Death's-heads don't count.)

    The king, in the lower lefthand corner, isn't smiling.
    A skeleton pins his shoulder to the ground
    with one arm; its other bony hand
    holds an hourglass to his face.
    The king looks worried,
    but doesn't focus on the sand:
    what gets him down's the second skeleton
    rifling his barrels of gold, wearing his crown
    or the skeleton of his crown.
   
    The courting lovers at the lower right
    might be smiling. And why not? The lute
    he's playing as he sings to her
    is tunefully accompanied
    by a skeleton's bowed viol
    over their shoulders, where they are not looking
    just at the moment.
 
                                      None of the crowd
    of peasants and burghers, being driven and drummed
    into a hobnailed boxtrap by a skeleton army
    who bear swords and trumpets, who are led by one
    skeleton mounted on a long thin horse,
    are smiling: they are screaming. And the priest,
    and the gentle ladies fleeing a disrupted feast,
    plucked at and embraced by skeletons (as another,
    wearing a red cape, serves them a skull on a silver platter),
    and the gentlemen fleeing all the other way,
    and the single fool in motley underneath the table,
    aren't smiling either.
 
                                     But the second horse,
    long and thin as the first,
    in blinders, hitched to the wagon full of skulls,
    bearing on his back a magpie and a skeleton
    that waves a lantern and a bell, smiles
    as a horse can smile: his muzzle kisses
    the peasant woman on the ground
    before the cart--and she, on her knees,
    has turned her head back to the horse,
    her hair is in the dirt, she's looking up
    into his big horse eyes, she's smiling
    the biggest smile
 
in all this hell.
 
 
  
2. Basler Meister von 1487
 
Salzburger Meister; Meister der Aarhusen Passion;
Basler Meister; Bayerischer Meister; Tiroler Meister.
In this first room I see no suffering, not really:
only the Passion, the bloodless birth
of John the Baptist, Mary on her deathbed.
Her eyes sink, her skin is gray, but I see no one suffering
except for one wild man crying in the foreground
--that's about it. In this world,
there are no trees, ships, cities, in the background:
it's all gold, red brocade, egg-shell-blue sky.
 
Through the next door, a diptych by the Basler Meister
of 1487: Hieronymous Tscherkkerbürlin at 16,
alive in the left hand-panel, dead at the right
with leather worm-ridden skin on his arms and chest
and a bare skull still bearing some of his golden hair.
 
 
 
3. Die Lorelei

Walking out into the city, I find myself singing.
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, daß ich so traurig bin...
 
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein, through Basel, down to the summer sea.