A Heidelberg Poem

by Jack Kelso

Philosopher's Walk Hath Given Us An Age

  (We sit on a bench below the northern

  hills of Heidelberg, above the river;

  a VOICE, yet not ours):

  Holy Mountain began a pebble in an eye

  before ideas Kant had yet pretended.

Here

  the skeleton death

  of a once kinged blood-head

  still darks to sip

  as Master of Wines.

  So we part by the kiln

  where no longer smell his ashes.

Here

  lime-moss steps line out

  to a steined tower

  leading to a pageant dream where

  a slice of cloud

  and half a sky before us turn

  to words said

  a thousand ways

  in centuries

  by thousands of another mind.

Here

  one gross alchemist

  bore an art four hundred

  paling winters and winter's

  storms have finally deadened.

  Now our pale brown Neckar River

  carries under its old old eggs

  of late Romanticism.

Here

  and in that day

  shouts of clearing water

  spaced through Heine's verse,

  embraced Eichendorff's pretty poesie,

  cut shrill rock

  into unseeded hills

  and was sipped by all poor burghers.

  You meek Easter sun gave little food then

  and the abbot still sits unheard

  in monastery hiding.

Here

  glass-stilled late late winter birch

  statued and sloped to balance

  is keen gray wonder to artists' staves

    where Schumann studied

       where Beethoven walked

         where Schopenhauer professed.

  And higher yet, near mountaintop,

  a stone engraved there rests.

  No man recalls where died the Stephanus Kloster.