Albrecht Dürer and me. David Zieroth

      and the brightest mark? his wide forehead

      below an abrupt line where brown curls

      shine and announce pride, head’s width

      of blue sky softly clouded, sun-streak burning

      above a background of fake ruins

      and the focus? Lanier’s lips, straight and stern

      ready to sneer, yet showing beneath refinement

      how many times he has been bruised

      (note the hint of green at the left temple)

      hairs on his red moustache curving up above

      his pointed beard ready and set to quiver

      he sat seven days for van Dyck, and both

      clearly relished that wide swath of rich cape

      tumbling down from his left and out of which

      bulge his arms in red-striped fabric

      such a pleasure to paint that the artist

      could manage in an afternoon, highlights

      of folds easy compared to the eyes some

      call cold, others unarmed, the gift of art

      to reflect and reveal each viewer accurately

      commemorative rooms

      Georg Trakl (February 3, 1887, Salzburg to November 3, 1914, Kraków)

      not a word in English, yet I understand

      yellowing paper holds up faded words

      small books plain in design

      black and white photographs

      light from windows muted (a storm

      is building, and later its mountain

      violence breaks and drenches

      my T-shirt: Salzburg, it says)

      from in here I can almost see

      the school he attended, still severe

      and grand and yet submitting

      in this city of churches, it is functional

      first and only with time dignified

      and perhaps saddened

      that many were dead

      in the short film a man’s voice

      intones his poems so tenderly

      I am reminded that language

      this harsh can be loving – because

      back home we’d read translations

      but never softly: scenes of the Eastern Front

      required at least a twisting

      of the jaw so out would come

      how he himself may have sounded

      gurgling on his deathbed from

      an overdose of cocaine, unclear

      whether suicide or error

      – but forever clear his small

      self-portrait: a painted darkness

      of reddish hair, green face

      makes a mask so unlike

      the blond young man in striped trousers

      seen sitting, eager not for war

      but for his life – and I see

      how summer light comes in

      and tries its best to tell me

      not to believe this possessed glow

      here on the wall set to trigger

      my dismay but instead to step

      back into the street, where

      he’d walked, shadows from clouds

      falling on him as they fall on me

      with sudden heat and thunder –