Even in this grey light the nail heads sing.
Even beneath this weather something falls
not quite daylight and not yet wholly darkness.
Admittedly, we have been given little,
beyond apparent surfaces, to work with:
a girl, a circus wagon, some bleak alley
Herr Sander, quite by accident, has chanced on,
hurrying, eyes half-closed, through Duren’s outskirts
in an attempt, it would seem, to pass through
as quickly as possible, to forget
what he has seen or, eyes half-closed, not quite seen.
But he finds himself lingering, then pausing,
against his instincts studying the girl,
all aspects of the setting, each detail
memorized, fixed, made room for, set in place,
the congruence of the look on her face
with her surroundings moving, haunting him,
making him need to take his time, move slowly,
rethink the whole arrangement—alley, wagon,
girl-at-a-door, weather of Düren, dust—,
go back, go back again, to her expression,
that mix of anguish, dreaming, of pure longing,
to see if he might have it, have it all,
before the weather thickens, or the moment
passes, or she falters in her resolve
not to decide, or choose, or darkness comes down,
complicating still further an already
overwhelmingly complicated picture.
And so it will be left, it seems, to us,
with whatever intelligence or passion
we can bring to bear, to locate the interest
such landscapes, dim, forlorn, hold for Herr Sander.
What we are given comes to this: bleached planks
of one wall of a shack or cabin, what
seems a hinged door with a small window in it
near the top of the portrait, German muslin
curtaining the left pane, the right ajar,
its dark square framing the head of a girl
peering out at us as she locks or unlocks,
dependent on her need, her strength, her pain,
her context (which we lack), an unseen latch
set at arm’s length beneath her, within reach,
one which creaks, you know, when the wind slams through it,
which trails, in any season, the strong scent
of rust, pure rust, metal fatigue, corrosion.
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