The Indoors is Endless

It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven hoists his death-mask and sails off. The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills. The wild geese are flying northwards. Here is the north, here is Stockholm swimming palaces and hovels. The logs in the royal fireplace collapse from Attention to At Ease. Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes, but the city wells breathe heavily. Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas are carried by night over the North Bridge. The cobblestones make them stagger mamselles loafers gentlemen. Implacably still, the sign-board with the smoking blackamoor. So many islands, so much rowing with invisible oars against the current! The channels open up, April May and sweet honey dribbling June. The heat reaches islands far out. The village doors are open, except one. The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence. The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience. It happened like this, or almost. It is an obscure family tale about Erik, done down by a curse disabled by a bullet through the soul. He went to town, met an enemy and sailed home sick and grey. Keeps to his bed all that summer. The tools on the wall are in mourning. He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter of night moths, his moonlight comrades. His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain against the iron-bound tomorrow. And the God of the depths cries out of the depths ‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’ All the surface action turns inwards. He’s taken apart, put together. The wind rises and the wild rose bushes catch on the fleeing light. The future opens, he looks into the self-rotating kaleidoscope sees indistinct fluttering faces family faces not yet born. By mistake his gaze strikes me as I walk around here in Washington among grandiose houses where only every second column bears weight. White buildings in crematorium style where the dream of the poor turns to ash. The gentle downward slope gets steeper and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.