From the Archives : Alpenpoem (2016)

Here on the mountain how far away

the world seems, though here too a man­­­

could arrive and remake it in his image

environed by an unknown number

of trees. A lakeside hotel where a man

arrives after a long drive, stays longer

than he had planned out of trepidation

for the driving away. A man arrives

here in the rain. He sees no summits

or mountains, in fact, though he knows

he is in the mountains. Where nights are

clear when they come and balconies hang

out into sublimity. He can’t tell whether

that flickering point up there is a star

or beacon from a cable car tower. A hut

partway up the mountain. That mass

hulking in the darkness he thinks

he sees, blacker than the night rising

over him. One moment barefoot  

out on the tiles, icy bedsheets the next

sleep subtracts him from. Come morning

tiles are warm, suspicions confirmed

that that was the mountain. No source

though for the light on what’s obviously

sheer rockface. But there is the river clarified

at the banks — how it turns antifreeze

blue at knee depth, right where one would

be swept along. Viscous, too recently

coursing through stone. Lime-dyed blue

in a way that shows how the water

there is water, its color accumulating

in the lake beyond. Not so much depth

as silt and boulders grading down

into higher surrounds of pine, cliff, sky

the dark reflects. And though it’s still

technically off-season, things are starting

to pick up at the hotel. This, despite that

the conditions of late November don’t exactly

match the measures taken. Flowers pulled

from their planters and rocks slightly bigger

than pebbles strewn about the snowless

parking lot, where guests’ suitcases stutter

ordeals of conveyance audible even now

as he sits down with ten minutes left

to order breakfast. Weißwurst, die nicht darf

das Mittagsläuten hören. Statt Kaffee ein dunkles.

A couple sits across from him — or is that

a mother and son. Suspicious, he thinks,

just how overstaffed the hotel is for being

so deserted. Waitstaff who stand silently

or hand-clean silverware with white gloves

and attend to their lone patrons’ needs

with an attentiveness that makes him

slightly uncomfortable — as if all of what

surrounded him here was now concentrating

on some point that he happened partially

to be contained by. The rather bizarre

19th Century quality of the maître d’s attire.

The mountain outside and its inclination

for the man to just fall off. The crystal flutes

where sunlight awaits a later morning

Riesling or the odd mimosa. Passing bodies

quake the lattice shone from the stems

on the tablecloth when a server asks

Warum schauen Sie so betrübt? Heute ist doch

so schön draußen! — jerking her head over

to the window, to the mountain outside.

He winces up at her face and that sun

behind it. Little tendrils of torn hair

not pulled back into her ponytail and then

blinded as she leaves. Snowblistered

ledges out of scale — wide as a bedroom or

just deep enough to rest one’s razor on.

He thinks of the Bergbahn queues

where the guests of the future will stand

around rubbing their hands together

trying for a little warmth to make better

their mistake of having come here

to see the shape of what things might be

sticking out of the snow. What is this

other than the most involved form

of boredom, waiting to climb the noon

that dusks already at the peaks.

As up on the plateau the wind wants

to blow scarves skyward, a skier is

airlifted from relative to absolute

safety. It’s hard to imagine that

somewhere out there there is

the frosted carcass of one of

Hannibal’s elephants, that died

simply from being in a place

it wasn’t supposed to be.