From As If of Wings
Fanny
Mendelssohn-Hensel, 1805-1847
5. INTERLUDE
To
enter life as summer—
roots set deep, nourished in soil
fragrant with heat,
flowers drawn open by
sun:
the corolla of a rose, each petal
peeling back from its potent core;
clematis’s swan neck
stretched tight,
sepals splayed:
deep purple pools punctuating sky,
a profusion of semitones
chorus to the day’s full blue,
easeful, become what
they will:
like fingers rippling the piano’s keys,
or steadying the violin’s strings
to certain pitch, transforming sound
even as they are
transformed:
minding, knowing what’s to come—
ardent afternoon, evening’s stain,
hypnotic counterpoint of steady rain,
the
light—pregnant, long.
6.
ZAUBERMANTEL
Hard
to believe they had just come from a walk,
their path taking them through forests of beech trees,
past the crumbling walls of the Cistercian abbey,
vines curled around ruins like meandering songs.
The soft silence of aged mortar and stone
brushed the ear, the strange geometric
of broken arch and gable cleaving,
petitioning the air: So
God created
humankind in his image . . . Male and female
he created them . . . placed them in a garden.
And
when they reached the town, the painted sills
and masonry facades so like the factory
their grandfather owned—its floor of dye-baths,
looms, skeins of yarn, the world he wove to veil
his crooked frame—seemed to watch them pass.
The words pierced their ears like dull needles
tearing cloth: Judenjungen!
Judenjungen!
The
young children wandering the streets
of Dobberan followed Felix and Fanny
for blocks. Lost siblings in a fairy tale,
their hastened pace matched by their pursuers,
Felix’s head throbbed when he abruptly turned,
fended taunting shoves with fists and yells.
They never thought to hide themselves, to slip
inside their family’s Zaubermantel—
magic
cloak to hide their Jewish blood, its silk
so finely drafted, spun, it could keep them safe,
or make them disappear in a wisp of smoke.
8.
CRADLESONG
(Fanny
Mendelssohn-Hensel)
A
miracle to birth a child—Sebastian
looks at me with sweet eyes, his new world
my own, his care my complete absorption,
a composition that breathes fullest music,
this passage I accepted, this door
I unexpectedly opened, fulfilling, filled.
How soon these hours will pass, these first
months an exclusive gift, his small hands, feet,
perfect limbs growing, grown, become memory,
like so much else, my own childhood, the music
I shared with Felix, the years’ busy silences
stretched between us like unwritten songs,
the faint impress of our intermittent letters
and few days together a plaintive fading note
like those unfinished manuscripts I’ve tucked
in a drawer, dimming glimmers of melody.
Again the world turns towards turbulence:
a Russian frigate anchors in the harbor
at Swinemünde, its cannons polished
to a fervent sheen, its armory a box
of cradled jewels tended like the rarest
works of art, carefully wrought to destroy.
How will we be judged by some future race
wiser than we, who will devise a peace;
what will they see when they look back—
an unfolding symphony, or a crumpled page?
Published
in After the