Articulation, and: Das Ding an Sich
- Articulation, and: Das Ding an Sich
ARTICULATION
And these, ladies and gentlemen, are the bones of Napoleon’s horse, Marengo. Articulated thus —tibia to fibula, scapula to humerus, appendicular skeleton latched to the dome of the spine and the thin ribs’ hanging flaps encasing the space of the missing heart— he looks refashioned out of a craft kit, a balsawood model everyhorse, perhaps. I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor is nothing, however, to this: neither a coffeepot nor toothbrush, nor His finest pearl-grey coat from the mausoleum; not plaster squeezed into the shape of what’s been lost to bring it back to life as a death mask, a punched-through backwards photograph of itself; nor any of the things embossed by use or touch or freer association (loose talk, hearsay) with His shining likeness— these very hooves trod mud at Austerlitz, this very sacrum made final victory certain. Moreover, put your eye to the eye socket (one by one and gently) and observe what changes: your straight perspective curves, the floor on which you’re standing tilts, the room’s clear atmosphere thickens and as mirrors angled off against each other produce an endless vaulted corridor to somewhere else, still truer things are given: of-all-the-Russias snow, a sky of smoke, the bite of iron, entrails in a heap, curled up like an outgrown foal, a man asleep inside a horse’s ruptured stomach… [End Page 20]
That’s how close Marengo stands to history— Sphenoid, Vomer, Lacrimal, Mandible— for however long he lasts before he crumbles, portal, time machine, skeleton key to what cannot be imagined. Who could resist a ticket to the steaming blooded fields of Europe just as the Dog Star fades? Hold your breath now while I show you this. [End Page 21]
DAS DING AN SICH
East Prussia, January 1945 a pig two cows a dray horse geese by the back door gaggle of grandmothers kiln-dry barns hay until summer gardens tucked into an orderly slumber
cutlery stewpots teakettles delft eggs in a blue bowl buttercheesehamhockmilk tables scrubbed clean as a wishbone spliced hares hanging from hooks sickle-fat
wireless gramophone grandfather clock a reading lamp a newspaper rack dead sons like icons on the wall Wehrmacht collars starched stiff a sewing basket
lavender bags June stowed between folds in a blanket chest bedsheets bath towels patchwork quilts cupboards of petticoats nightgowns lace & afterwards
such ransacked pillows such bayoneted eiderdowns a whiteout of feathers in bedrooms hallways alleyways courtyards squares
like after-Christmas snow or nouns unmoored from speech in the blistering static of Grossdeutscher Rundfunk’s final broadcast [End Page 22]
sinéad morrissey is the author of five collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Parallax, won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2013. Parallax and Selected Poems, published in the United States in 2015, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. She teaches creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast, in Ireland.
