{"id":175,"date":"2012-02-02T10:05:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T10:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=175"},"modified":"2012-02-02T10:06:10","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T10:06:10","slug":"trauerspiel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/trauerspiel\/","title":{"rendered":"Trauerspiel"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Gord Sellar<\/em><\/p>\n

I.
\nDress nimbly; move with dignities through these halls.
\nRise when you please, even when the sun has fallen;
\nI would give you all I have, my beloved Sovereigns–
\nI would fail to dream of regicides, even given provocation,
\nAnd naked in the streets, I would think you philosophes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every thing is gauzed in a webwork of gold:
\nCome now, take my hand and I will guide you.
\nThere are flutes, heavy drums and silver horns
\nBrought out to please you, and all the children here
\nHave fretted themselves like viols, so that now
\nThey shimmer a sightly music, faces to be read
\nAnd red with delight, for your sake, yours alone.<\/p>\n

II.
\nWhat I see when I shut my eyes is an army of cellists
\nsawing endlessly, mathematical menuets
\nand other courtly dances that spin in the form
\nof electrons, hidden in the drowse of wires
\nthat gird the planet. Pavana lachrymae:<\/p>\n

digits. Only numbers. Beautiful, sacred;
\ncounting off the balances of the world,
\nsuch as angels once were called to do.
\nA calculus of agreements, waivers, shipments,
\nin this language resembling that of lovers.<\/p>\n

Wealth begets wealth. And so we endless sweep,
\ninvisible whorling courtly currents so that
\nnobody is known by name or face. I can’t
\nfind you, if I ever need to I will be
\nin such a predicament: why are the gods invisible?<\/p>\n

III.
\nOur bodies titillate, don’t they, when we go
\nto the lengths that have been specified here, before us?<\/p>\n

Hunger. It is the one true zeitgeist<\/em>, now.
\nThe country filled with yawning ulcers.<\/p>\n

Nothing fills it, although it can be hidden
\nfrom view. And we are engineered desolations.<\/p>\n

If there are still angels, what do they sing about?
\nProfanities? The wages of our endeavours?<\/p>\n

I hope sincerely that they have lost their sight,
\nand if there’s a God, that blindness has struck the poor thing.<\/p>\n

Last night I went out once again, and I
\nbought something that I didn’t know I needed.<\/p>\n

IV.
\nI once wanted to be a Thoreau myself,
\ndrop out and say farewell forever to
\nthis world I found myself in. But it won’t
\nchange a thing, conversing with the birds,
\nor resolving to myself that I’ll know beans.<\/p>\n

The husbandry is one thing, I agree.
\nBut scavenging and sleeping in the wild
\ntears nothing down, it is not made even
\nof words. And sharing in the hunger that we’ve made
\nis cosmetic. Because we always must return.<\/p>\n

There is some thing that calls us, maybe because
\nit’s always been there, since our first recall?
\nBecause there is a truth to luxury? Or because
\nwe know that it is part of us already?
\nThat history must dance until it stops?<\/p>\n

V.
\nThat’s right. The world is a concubine. Cram it in.<\/p>\n

I suspect the scent will linger for a long time.<\/p>\n

Incalculable, the unwritten verdicts that wait
\nat the other end of history. They will speak of us,
\nbut I have no idea what they’ll say. I hope
\nthat they harbour pity and maybe feel
\nof the kind of shock that children show, discovering
\nthat some people are born into the world blind
\nand realizing that this means they cannot see.<\/p>\n

\n

Trauerspeil was published in Headlight Anthology, Volume 4<\/em><\/a> (2001).<\/p>\n

The Trauerspiel is a type of allegorical tragic drama which was popular in Germany during (at least) the 17th and 18th centuries. It is normally a five-act play dealing with the pomp and power of a ruler, who, though the forces of history and the actions of himself and others, moves from lavish and glorious spectacle, comical interludes and supernatural experiences toward the recognition of the role of Fate in the transience of the earthly flourishing of all passionate and powerful rulers. The monarch’s rule\u2014not subject to human judgment but only to that of the invisible forces that placed the ruler in power \u2014declines toward the end of the drama until the ruler’s life and glory are simultaneously snuffed out, like a candle, by the will of Fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gord Sellar I. Dress nimbly; move with dignities through these halls. Rise when you please, even when the sun has fallen; I would give you all I have, my beloved Sovereigns– I would fail to dream of regicides, even given provocation, And naked in the streets, I would think you philosophes. Every thing is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-canada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-2P","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}