Buying Camels in Dresden

Like all great rivers

The Elbe is familiar at first sight.

The barges

             spic & span as the front parlors

Of model homes in Saxony —

The steam paddle-wheelers & other

                                               vessels,

No less impeccable — all run

With a near soporific efficiency.

You lean out

                   & the land starts up:

The parcels of pastures & castles

Bearing with them trees & cows & cattle-grids

         the crowned heads of daisies

Little knots of   human habitations,

Cigarette factory & garrisons

Floodplains, sheet pilings

Run

          All run,

As if   by an engine,

Some cement breaker from under the river

                                   torn turfs all

Bob up & down,

Brown

           like bears in bear gardens

The cupolas, cavaliers

Their ruinous sandstone reflections alongside.

Whether this is the famous effect

               Of   the Balcony of   Europe

Cork coasters chasing gilt coronets

              Maps loosely adrift on a map

So many teacups clicking,

Large balconies colliding

           Breaking up into smaller ones

Valley & vineyards

Mines, bridges, sugar-beet fields, villas,

Museum corridors

A Procession of   Princes

Chimera of   Chinese porcelain palaces

Cargoes of   homeland & meadows,

Other

Municipalities, the beer & beer mats,

Coal, forestry,

History atop Geography atop History

Flags roll unroll — coalesce

Black — red — yellow

Yellow Black

Red

Runs

White

Sunk trains with passengers

Trains sunk

               April ’45 Bergen-Belsen

Run   Elbe   Run

I pulled away.

I have come this day to the bank of the Elbe

To write a few postcards

In a tearoom.

                                  On the steps up

From street level to the Old Albertinum Museum

                                         some way from the tearoom

A man too is minding his business

On his lap a glass case

For keyboard

2 rows of colored sand in test tubes

Raspberry /burnt sienna /turquoise /Prussian blue /lavender /ochre

Or neutral — just sand.

Into a beer bottle he tips a little color

           & before you know

Our man has tossed one up in the air like a baby

& caught it roundly by the heels too,

Le voilà, not one grain escapes

It is shockproof, waterproof,

A world like a Swiss watch,

& time-proof —

You count three camels

It looks like 4, — any number could have been packed in the bottle

Which, when turned slowly in the palm

                                  An orderly procession,

: Camels against a horizon of   low sun

An irradiated sky,

Palm tree, undulating dunes

               A strata of deep watermelon subsiding to honey halva

The silhouette of a tent, hint of

A sandstorm in the air.

                                         Grit under eyelids

& should you prefer

From the array of   bottles you could take home one with

A full sun, an Egyptian sun-disk

& you have his word, — no fear,

             each hermetically sealed,

Will travel.

                                                 As if   to say not all the grains

Are sand, our man also works

With rice.

He’s a jeweler.

He will encrypt

On a grain of rice

                             a word,

Enclosed in a colored phial of water

           again hermetically

For all time

                    Like the camels.

A jewel, he said,

The word

                         a ruby, an emerald

Of   water

Should you forget, here his English broke off

But you understand

Yes, there is closure.

As I watched, a lady at my elbow

                        Like one at a séance, asked

For the name “Christine,” her grand daughter, she said.

& he, our scribe, answered he was from Iran,

           — not that anyone inquired.

Iranian, then

— Hence the camels

Though here in Dresden

He had looked Mexican

A second before.

I looked again & saw that he could be from anywhere,

It depends on where you stand.

This man has for good or ill

                         the face of the world,

Which he bears sadly

With some mirth.

I pulled away.

                     Another moment I would have

To come up with a name, a word,

Another world.

I was happy with my purchase of camels

On the Elbe.

Back home it holds Dresden & the Elbe for me in a bottle.

It runs

           for so long as anyone would care to look,

Not a drop more.

I would have liked to write a card to the bottler

Addressing sands

           sands of the world thereof

My migrant,

                 errant friend

I wish you all the grains

                       whatever you had set out for,

& always

Sands enough to take you,

                                just where you stand

Waiting for your No. 28 sunsets, No. 20,

The watermelon sunrise

& no end of camels.