sophie chortec buried twenty feet below
her husband, mere lady-in-waiting.
if there is real love in this world it is overbalanced
by spite that chills the marrow even unto death.
if there is real sorrow it rests uncompensated.
“it’s nothing,” he said, holding her hand.
we could have turned back but providence
whispered so strongly in my ears.
“it’s nothing,” she sees a stream of nothings
pouring from his jugular, she holds his hand,
it’s nothing when we’re together, nothing
when our blood mix as one.
in the procession the gold hang mockingly
on the velvet-draped hearse, mockingly
from the white ears of women beside
the white ears of men about to be blown
into pieces by shells or deafened by shells,
the gold hang mocking the shock
of a moment so complacently oblivious.
what a terrible tragedy, the heir dead -
the heir and that good for nothing wife
of his, what strange blindness plagues
the man in love. what pitiless tears these.
where we go we go hand in hand.
at court they hope it's a hot place.
william says it shall be up above.
whereever we go we go hand in hand.
where you go you go alone, blinded,
shocked, deafened, deceived, drowned
in the slow waking of the years from
long drawn-out nightmares.
when I turn I see you sophie max ernst
and I shed tears so pitiful they burn
the ground instead of watering it.
oh sophie max ernst we are not the dead.
if we were I pray your world dies with us,
I pray you a quiet leave-taking, pray you
a silence unwarped by mockery, pray you
and pray the world out of existence,
pray that it goes out as gently
as the lamps on a dim Vienna morning.
where we go we go hand in hand.
where you go you go on choking in the dark
strangled hanging loose-limbed from a beam
by your own right hand,
blind to the vision of him who closed his ears
on the funereal wedding day of two bloods now one,
on the day we walked forward hand in hand,
noah and emzara in an ark of black and gold
through a flood of pallid faces pallid hands.
oh sophie max ernst remember
to smooth your gowns to curtsy to bow
to say thank you my lady when you’re in a crowd
to repeat your prayers as I’ve taught you.
perhaps childish sobs would soften granite ears.
hush now darlings...
where you go you go alone, blinded,
shocked, deafened, deceived, drowned
in the slow waking of the years from
long drawn-out nightmares.
no consolation comes to me but that
what you have seen this day fortifies
you better than the million other stalks
crushed by the east wind rushing on
to meet the pelting western rains.