Memory Poem by Johan Andreas Der Mouw

As swift the horseman o’er Lake Constance flew
His steed, snow- scattering. The twilight came.
His shadow, dark- blue giant, slowly greyed,
E’en its last violet. ’Twas night anew.

The plain, has it no end? He tries in vain
To see where snow and lake- horizon blur.
Thank God! A distant lamp that twinkling stirs:
The far side must be reached – The ferry’s gained.

The ferryman, shocked, speaks. And he hears straight
Away, but hears another sound: the smash
And pound on ice of thund’ring hooves that crash,

Each leap, a mighty clock’s stroke ’gainst the gate
By fast- impatient death: he taunts, provokes.
He comes – The door splits wide – A cord that chokes –

And of that man, who by the ice slid down,
Dead, dead – while yet the ferryman still spoke –
In throttled throat a futile scream that choked,
In dying ear the tolling hoof- clack’s sound,

Thinks often, who aged slowly in great pain:
Reviewing life, he can’t see why the taut-
Stretched surface of all human fragile thought,
By sorrow battered, has not split in twain.

He listens, helpless: memories of old
Murmur of Then, and Then. It would appear

His I is dizzied and assailed by fear
Of what lurked in th’abyss of his own soul.

He listens; and his hand, unsure, now strokes
His forehead. And he sits there; and he looks.

He sees his life, an endless desert scene.
And thinks of picture books of childhood years:
The sand pure yellow, all seems empty here,
Though tiny background triangles are seen.

They’re pyramids, he ascertains with pride –
In deep oblivion’s refreshing shade
He would his tiredness dearly now have laid,
That far illusion no more could deride.

He thinks: That was me then; and now I’m grey.
And in my father’s garden had my own

Small plot of cress and radishes in May,
And violets, deep purple flecked with brown;

I thought them best. And yellow. – And one hand
Rubs from the other a dry feel of sand.

And as the twilight slowly came he lay
Deep in the grass, gazed at the evening sky;
The garden an abyss, walls mountain- high,
Blacked by ivy with cobwebs’ drab array;

It seemed a well in which the light of day
Floated on darkness, full of wraithlike shapes;
From those next- door the stray sounds that escaped
Plonked in it like small stones: a laugh, – a name,

He saw the swallows as black flitting specks
Beneath the evening clouds now yellow- flecked;
In blue, then, you could hardly see them soar.

And the thin twitter of their veering cheeping
That seemed to make the lofty silence deepen,
Fell as fine drizzle in th’abyss once more.

The yellow clouds turned slowly into red.
He’d think then: Now the sunset has begun;
And look back at the swallows, who’d a sun
Still for a long while yet. And often dread

Ran through him: Mother will be dead one day,
What then? – Once at his cheek he felt quite near
A bat’s low rustling, then a stab of fear,
He saw it loom up close to, huge and grey.

He’d notice then how deep the dark was stowed
In his abyss and slowly overflowed,
With waves of darkness all around him filling;

Then, suddenly, he saw a twinkling blue
Right by the sloping roof he just could view,
That lovely star, bright as a brand- new shilling.

The clouds turned grey. And every swallow was
It seemed, invisible – quite chill the ground.
Night moths, white for the most part, whirled around.
Small beetles rustled in the dewy grass.

And like a marble of fine, pale- blue glass
A lion or dog of silver at its core,
So, on the sloping roof, poised that large star,
Though without falling off; a moment past

It had been standing closer to, he thought.
At times the old pear tree’s blackened leaves were caught

By th’evening wind. At times this quivering mingled
With a soft flapping ’gainst the path’s fine shingle.

Could that be such a bat? It grew quite chill –
A window somewhere closed. Once more ’twas still.

Time to go in. Just one quick final stare.
The star once more had glided further off. –
A shame such beasties oft would tend to drop
Down on you. Always creeping in your hair

Said auntie, and the danger was quite real:
She knew – “What was her name? Long since, that day” –
Of a young girl whose plait was cut away
Because a bat was trapped there; makes you squeal.

Though from a distance, nice, he felt quite sure.
He saw them zigzag in their jagged flight,
And then behind each other, three or four,

In comic haste they’d teeter through the sky;
You’d hear their rasping, chittering inflexion
When round the house they lost their fixed direction.

What will life be like later? he then thought.
When you’re grown up, what then? – And he straightway
Recalled a poem from The Break of Day
In which one might compare all that Christ taught

To “balm and physic for the pain of life
and all th’afflictions that its root doth blight”;
And then: my yoke is mild, my burden light;
And: Heav’nly bliss transcends all earthly strife.

This read aloud, his grandmother had said:
That’s what you felt, ’twas all completely true.

And though he’d not quite grasped what had been read,
The gist was: life was nasty through and through.

Would he, when grown up, out of misery
Wish even to be dead? That could not be.

’Twas getting cold: his clothes felt damp with dew.
So slowly it had gone, it seemed still light.
Though deep the dusk, it was as yet not night.
He went inside, for supper now was due.

And when he shiv’ring came into the room
He felt secure – a stranger though, he sensed;
The plate’s rim gleamed, a disc of white against
The yellow gaslight, with its murm’ring plume.

Now vaguely listening, talking, he first saw
How dark, how blue- black it had grown outdoors,
It seemed as if he’d come back from afar;

He ate his sandwich, gave a goodnight kiss,
Retired, suffused with yellow clouds’ pure bliss,
With dusk, with future life and evening star;

Folded his clothes in a devout routine:
For they had cost much toil; and then he knelt,
Said for his parents the Lord’s Prayer, and felt
The sleeping suit lie cool ’gainst his warm skin.

And, dreaming now, past black- green ivy, saw
Swallow and bat that flitted to and fro,
And on a chimney top watched from below
The anxious teetering of a silver taw, –

Straightway he knows that all of this was him, –
It’s just like yesterday. – Recalls the grim
Tale of a man not grey some hours ago. –

And straightway he knows all: Good God! He sees
His life to be but endless miseries
And strikes the table with one mighty blow.