Se penche pour capter son image sérénissime dans une glace à trumeau. / He leans over to check out his Most Serene image in a pier glass.—San-Antonio, Napoléon Pommier
The mirror’s between two windows
in that phantom waterfront Dreyer
house in Lübeck, An der Trave,
lost in a forced sale long, long ago.
Outside, the scene I'd say's not
credible—I never knew the place
though, still unsummoned into being then,
I came along later, in distant Africa.
In the right window, a wine-dark sea
—most likely red jerepigo—
laps up in Kalk Bay Harbour en face.
On the other side, a kitsch
view of koppies and the Great Karoo,
unknown to my canny Schönenfahrer ancestors, who drawn by trade to the Baltic shore became entangled here.
She could be me, that great lady,
though German in a silly way;
she surely knew her daemon, as I do,
but doubted it. I doubt today.
Her image shivers, windows vanish,
nothing's left; a wanness waits.
It always happens! Best banish
such passing inconsequential states
at least until the glass reflects on this:
that time to be, which we might—if not—miss.
The Trave river in Lübeck
Notes: Koppies, "little heads," are small hills in South Africa. Jerepigo is a sweet, fortified Cape wine high in alcohol. The Hanseatic Schönenfahrer guild traded with Skåne in southern Sweden. A daemon is a software program or process that runs in the background; Heraclitus says that character is one's daemon, or fate (frag. 119 D-K).
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