Ghent

From every tower, molten metal flows

and flows, poured down in masses — floods so great

that down there, from the mold that is the street,

it shines, as if from cast bronze, daylight rose.

Up on that raised and hammered rim one spies

the threaded, gaudy, parti-colored frieze:

a stream of slight young girls and fresh-faced boys.

And as its undulant waves pulse, swim, and rise,

upholding from below the dubious weight

of banners, obstacles loom up to meet

its flowing, which God's unseen hand restrains.

And suddenly — there — swept up in the heat

of the moment almost by the curled smoke,

the seven censers fly up, terror-struck,

trying to break their silver chains.

Onlookers bank this stream-bed they define,

where everything slows down, then rolls and rushes —

what's coming and what's chryselephantine.

Unsteady baldachins, whose trappings shine,

Rise up to balconies their gold cloth brushes.

All recognize, in Spanish finery

aloft above the flowing white, the old

statue. It is a little effigy,

its face uplifted and the infant held

there on its knees. Now ever-closer, pressing

on in innocent and guileless crown,

it gestures always, never looking down —

out of the thick brocade, a wooden blessing.

But since they look up shyly from below

as she begins to pass the faithful kneeling;

and since it seems that she commands them so

with what her raised up, brown eyes are revealing

(proud eyes — indignant, certain, and abrupt):

they stand astonished, undecided, torn.

And then they go. But she is taken up

within that stream — a hundred different gaits,

and yet alone, along a path well-worn.

The thundering-belled cathedral's maw awaits.

And by their women-shoulders she is borne.

Die Insel

Nordsee

I

Die nächste Flut verwischt den Weg im Watt,

und alles wird auf allen Seiten gleich;

die kleine Insel draußen aber hat

die Augen zu; verwirrend kreist der Deich

um ihre Wohner, die in einen Schlaf

geboren werden, drin sie viele Welten

verwechseln, schweigend; denn sie reden selten,

und jeder Satz ist wie ein Epitaph

für etwas Angeschwemmtes, Unbekanntes,

das unerklärt zu ihnen kommt und bleibt.

Und so ist alles was ihr Blick beschreibt

von Kindheit an: nicht auf sie Angewandtes,

zu Großes, Rücksichtsloses, Hergesandtes,

das ihre Einsamkeit noch übertreibt.