IM NEBEL VERSCHWINDEN
My ghost sat
comfortably ensconced
in an armchair
opposite me.
A fire roared
between us.
The whiskey glinted
in the glass
like a thought
held in amber.
Outside a fog had
wrapped the world
in cotton wool
like a memento
in a badly scuffed
lacquer box.
As host I
offered my ghost
a little something
"...a G&T perhaps?"
My ghost slyly smiled:
"I, never....touch spirits!"
"Ok...!" snapped my ghost
looking very pale
"...let's leave reality
out of this!"
"No tree knows
its neighbour
. . .each alone. . .
. . .each alone. . ."
I muttered
in my mind.
But I must have spoke
my mind out loud.
"What's that?"
hissed my ghost
"That's Hesse...I believe."
I addressed my ghostly alter ego.
"...all about being alone in a mist..."
I mused as if it hadn't been there.
Just an idle
thought like
a dandelion seed
getting caught in a sleeve.
"And what has that...got to do with this?"
my ghost looked miffed
"Oh, nothing..." I smiled
"...just a feeling."
"Can we skip
the literary stuff!"
my ghost acidly suggested.
"Of course...of course!"
I assured it.
"Im Nebel verschwinden..."
I thought aloud for the last time.
"And do you mind if we use
...English."
"Yes, yes...!" I said
"What ever you say..."
"I'm here because from where I am
I'm not pleased with how you're leading
. . .my life!"
"Hold on a sec!" I said.
"I'm not dead yet!"
"Are you allowed to haunt
your own self?"
"Do you have to get a haunting permit?
Is it the haunting season...am I game"
And so the conversation
dragged on until
yawwwwnnnnnn...dawn
when my ghostly self
felt it had to depart.
Reality had snuk
back in the back door.
I sat in the chair
dead to the world
become my ghostly self
as it happened
and strolled serenely into
the next world.
The fog had lifted.
*
I lose a lot of poems as they pile up in my initial scribbles and I can no longer read my own writing. I have to decipher them after that. This was written before my brother's death and a little while after climbing to take down a book I reach for the next step and it wasn't there and I just entered a fog of nothingness. Came through like a puppet with cut strings and then alright again. My brother was asking me how I write poems and I was telling him the gist of this and other poems that resulted from "this incident'...I little thought that he would slip away from the world and I would lose him forever.
Hermann Hesse's beautiful poem IM NEBEL( IN THE FOG )...is what is running through my mind.
IM NEBEL VERSCHWINDEN means to vanish into the fog. I thought if I am about to vanish then I might as well go out dressed in Hesse's words.
IM NEBEL
Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.
Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben Licht war,
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.
Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkle kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allen ihn trennt.
Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Leben ist einsam sein.
Kein Mensch kennt den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.
IN THE FOG
Strange, to wander in the fog.
Each bush and stone stands alone,
No tree sees the next one,
Each is alone.
My world was full of friends
When my life was filled with light,
Now as the fog descends
None is still to be seen.
Truly there is no wise man
Who does not know the dark
Which quietly and inescapably
Separates him from everything else.
Strange, to wander in the fog,
To live is to be alone.
No man knows the next man,
Each is alone.
–Hermann Hesse, Im Nebel from Unterwegs (1911) in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, p.
