dance macabre
after the 15th century canvas
autumn comes early, the air yellow-blue
like being caught without a coat in the first drops of a storm
the middle ages only continue
along the path, a pair watches dogs fighting
while another lonely traveler ventures on
so the preacher grips the pulpit
proclaiming verses in miniscule gothic script
measuring credit and pardon
yet for nearly a century already
death has set that movable type
following every print’s edition
anonymous as the members
of the master Rodke’s workshop
its helpers, ascetic, have danced so long that
their eyeless skulls resemble their partners’
one lifts a coffin
by the preacher’s padded shoulders
another leaps grandly in rags and
coldly touches the palm of the pope
who furrows his brow
surely the gold-trimmed red velvet
will weigh on the king
whose sword has dulled and shadowy cross
blocks his hot feet
nearly half-naked, the dead ones
listen to each their quarrels and requests:
the queen’s gambit, or her fair hair
or the cardinal’s mane
grown long with learning
but how patiently they approach
these noble-born, with health and leisure
as though, through other lands and nations,
they have migrated
far enough to split their stomachs from hunger
to learn the rudiments of a bagpipe
or to turn the hurdy-gurdy
where the surviving fragment ends
one of their hands reaches to the next
in the chain
and ignorant of the missing bishop
I stand and write—
stained glass casts itself
back through the display,
visitors sit nervously in plastic chairs
then leave, stepping over stone sepulchers,
a security guard wanders by
and the elevator sighs
past the plaque of capital investors
in the corner an old man
turns the pages of a book one by one
shadows in hollywood
(a geologic reverie)
before they divorced
Diego paints Frida’s golden earrings on an asbestos
cement shingle
between green and blue her picture will remain,
hidden in his workshop until 1957
what love waits for death as a revelation?
something like her gaze has told me
that by intervals of sacrifice
light shed what wounded eyes have paid less
as if she had read, already, the children
surrounding the ruined library
heard chants around the door to longing
or felt a yellow-white wing unfolding
from a shard of pottery
for by platform parking garages toll
for the souls of Beverly Hills
and before arrival, home has become
another shopping center, full of costumes
dwelling in the space of irrational functions
forgetting demolition…
from a house of sunrise
mining such cavernous days
shadows in Hollywood merge and divide;
the desert sanctions a total archive from the mass graves
having shed vast murals from its oily skins
while along with her entourage
our star will draw back in manifold arrays
to a palace of color
— Ian Gwin is a writer and translator, specializing in the Baltic languages. Recent translations include short stories by the decadent Estonian writer Jaan Oks in Estlit magazine.