(4)

 

the moscovite bends sailor ears
she wants a chin from him he says
because her own got smashed anno the
capture of kronstadt (kuhlmann

had already in lübeck been fitted
with a blue-and-white outfit we know
he never took off) but all so dense
so sluggish so crude back then

in leiden where (how well the other man
was dressed) a fearful hemorrhage pointed
spring-motions “go breslau:” very very hot
via livonia to stambul (haven't you been

published?) on to strassbourg and their now
inevitable rapprochement
— blow-stunned one so he burned on
— ablaze the sailor so he lay slain

 

 

n e x t

__________________

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651 Breslau-1689 Moscow), Baroque poet and mystic whose wanderings took him as far as Istambul, where he hoped to convert the Sultan. Three attempts at marriage came to nothing. During his second stay in Moscow he was arrested as a heretic and sentenced to death by burning.

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751 Livonia-1792 Moscow), Sturm-und-Drang playwright. In 1777 he suffered a nervous breakdown, which is the subject of Georg Büchner's Lenz (which ends with the words: “so he lived on”). He was found dead in a street in Moscow, presumably murdered.

 

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