"A Death at Badenweiler".(Poem)

 
   1904 
 
   Moscow! You should have seen the city then. 
   Even in winter, the slate-blue river locked 
   in ice below the Kremlin walls, the glaring 
   plain of small boats frozen against the banks, 
   the crowds in lush fur capes or threadbare shawls 
   flowed through the shadowed streets as one dark current, 
   the city blazing like a photograph. 
 
   Cities like Moscow can be too much with you; 
   they are too great, as other cities are 
   too small. We found ourselves in Badenweiler 
   that July, my brother nervous and exhausted-- 
   nothing, the doctors claimed, but his exams. 
   We had fled south, south, to the smoky hills 
   of the Black Forest, smudged as a fairy tale. 
   The season then was running near the flood, 
   the preening crowds in frills of summer dress 
   making slow progress down the promenades 
   that pierced the town, to see and to be seen, 
   like those who in Persuasion swanned the walks. 
   The curtained dining room of our hotel 
   let us stand witness to the sweeping entree 
   of a great actress we had known in Moscow. 
   Turned from the door of one august establishment, 
   Frau C. and her husband had been forced to take 
   an airless chamber that overlooked the street; 
   yet, to their sharp relief, that stifling day, 
   with the most gracious show of courtesy, 
   the hotel manager sent in his card 
   to ask if they would view a quiet room 
   that chance had just then made available. 
   Her fox-faced husband had been ill all spring; 
   and, when the wracking demons came upon him, 
   from his pocket he removed--trees elegant, 
   sealed tight, wholly discreet--a blue spitoon 
   (for that sole reason had their first hotel 
   abruptly withdrawn its hospitality). 
   Though tanned, even robust, the invalid 
   already bore a haunted, feral look 
   but fancied a lazy tour of the Crimea 
   and had me order him two flannel suits, 
   cream with a blue stripe and a blue with cream. 
   Those afternoons, I read him Russian papers, 
   the pages black with bulletins from Japan. 
 
   One humid night, I woke to a frantic knock. 
   Shivering upon my threshold stood Frau C., 
   clad in a dressing gown, wringing her hands, 
   face pale like a ghost's. My hair in disarray, 
   I ...