David V

"Then one morning about eleven o’clock, as she stood by the open window and looked out over the sea with sad, yearning eyes, she heard the notes of a piano sound softly through the house, as if it were in gentle accord with wind and waves. The music was so quick, so smooth, so wonderfully fluent and masterly, so sure and firm, like an army of splendid beings bringing her tidings of peace and love".

"To Hedwig, who was so anxious to get well that, like all melancholy people, she was always thinking about her own condition, this meeting seemed to be a blessing sent to do her good. For this man possessed the power of raising her mind out of the drifting sands of melancholy and sinful imaginings. If he would only play to her".

-Frederik van Eeden, "Van de koele mere des doods"

"How could I leave?"

He asked himself

Though, he had never been there

But he jotted down the maps

Of the parks and of the jolts

Remembered pathways back home

Down the alleys, rained upon

Charcoal passages

That divided the other writer

From the true object of his affections

He wondered where could home be

What it would be like

Had he been not so late in life

Drawing sketches of the space

In his mind, awake all night

Trying not to think of illness

Of the irreparable damage

In the eye, the ear and the hand

In the walls, at the prison

He drew fountain springs

Thus, while bleeding

Navigating in this last breath

Of his own bodily life

He dreamt, for a last time

Swimming in the tiny rivers

Extending from the bed to the lightbulb

He had never seen something this beautiful

There was this tiny mountain, a hill

And an island, uninhabited, heavenly

Frozen waters surrounded it

Bathing the northern earth

In foams of grayest fogs

There were other moments

More perverse

He would not dare jot them down

They were like flights

At the expense of the canvas

Untouched by the world, by the blood

The eyes of a wolf, of erratic legs

Constant and transparent blue

Neutral to the language of the limbs

Only the glass could reach the lip

Tombstones afar

Travelling southwards

The first movements of the mouth

A big haul of fish for the fall

Receding toward the sorrow of the pencil

As if the flood of a tide

Swallowing big islands, then the immensity too

The physical pain again, steamrolls

First from the left eye, through the throat, into the back

Contaminated from the hairchest of former lovers

Now forgotten, condemned, unmentioned

Yet the skin still this soft, like paper, like the sun

Unused by the time, free and so unkind

So absolutely mortal, faithless, self-contained

When will I arrive there?

He asked himself

Though, he had never left

The heart knew well the maps

He could no longer feel

The motions, the jerks, the options

The city was still there

An empty bed, bloodied and transparent

Crawling through fields of wheat and figs

Thousands of miles from afar

His body making love with the mud

And the stones, unconscious as he was

Drowning at last

With only one eye open

Through the viscous waters of silt

Watching abovewards

The airplanes flying abroad

So helpless this moment of love

He imagined the hours

And the minutes, the years after the hours

Even the first time, after the last

Until the stream engulfed by the bridge

Would cut off his last glimpse, of this world

Beautiful as it was, unpromising, unsettling

He sent his love in a boat

That by mistake

Was bound for Rotterdam

Then he awoke

He wasn't dead

But yet, he wasn't there