Songs in Sepia and Black & White

Norbert Krapf

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780253006325
• eBook ISBN: 9780253006363
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Photography
• Index: Literature

"In these 101 poems Norbert Krapf explores the richness of his ancestry... a book that confirms Krapf's status as one of America's finest living poets." —Benjamin Hedin, author of Under the Spell A collaboration born of a shared love of music, photography, poetry, and Indiana, this book celebrates the history, literature, and art that informs the present and shapes our identity. Richard Fields's black and white photos are evocative imaginings of Norbert Krapf's poems, visual metaphors that extend and deepen their vision. Krapf's poems pay tribute to poets from Homer and Virgil to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Wendell Berry, and to singer-songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. They also explore the poet's German heritage, question ethnic prejudice and social conflict, and praise the natural world. The book includes a cycle of 15 poems about Bob Dylan; a public poem written in response to 9/11, "Prayer to Walt Whitman at Ground Zero"; "Back Home, " a poem reproduced in a stained glass panel at the Indianapolis airport; and ruminations on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, "Questions on a Wall." "Pursuing a tri-fold creative concept that unites poetry, art in the form of photography, and music is certainly not a light challenge. Norbert Krapf has mastered it with remarkable virtuosity and once again reinforced his reputation as the pre-eminent German-American poet of the English language." — Yearbook of German-American Studies "Some of Krapf's poetry is breathtakingly moving. Most of it is very insightful... The way he joins history and emotion is wonderful." — Englewood Review of Books

4 Moon of Falling Leaves

Bavarian Blue

I'm on the train by myself in Bavaria,

don't know how I got there or where

I'm going, except back into my past.

My journal open on my lap,

I record what I see and feel, to share with

anyone who may one day care

to read or listen. I look out

at the landscape and see something

I can almost not believe, stands

of unending wild lupine, spikes

of dry purplish blue around every

bend, climbing every bank as if

rising up to touch me where I sit,

this flower that people in the country

where I was born would die to grow

in their garden. Here it is everywhere,

like wild weeds gone out of control,

free to the eye to take in, to ingest,

this cornucopia of dark color left

behind by the ancestors who departed,

perhaps brought along in memory

and talked about until the dark blue

faded into oblivion. Here out

in the countryside between villages

this deep haunting color takes me

in its grip and pulls me back off this

train into the Bavarian fields

that once had names to those who

worked them for others, like my

day-laborer ancestors, who must

have worshiped these wild mysterious

flowers, so hearty they take root

anywhere, must have missed them

when they entered the shade-flooded,

tree-thick southern Indiana wilderness,

must have missed and longed for what

I now see everywhere, over and over,

as the rails curve and climb and swerve

through this countryside I love as if

I once curled a scythe in these fields

and pulled a rake. When I fall

asleep tonight I will be back in bed

in a cottage where animals breathe

between the same walls where I see

wild lupine bloom beneath my eyelids.

Eberhard Reichmann at Peter's Gate

He's following in the footsteps

of all the German immigrants

whose stories he helped to tell.

As he passes, they greet him,

give him a Wurst and stein of beer,

say once more, Auf Wiedersehen.

At Heaven's Door, he teaches

St. Peter how to sing the immortal

hymns in Swabian dialect.

The Great Gate swings open,

the heavenly choir sings,

and Eb's voice leads the way

as we follow in his footsteps

singing with him the lyrics

he led us back to with gusto.

Fire in a Horse Trough

Lohr am Main

Cobblestones on the street where

my maternal ancestors once lived.

Before an ancient cottage, a horse

watering trough filled with black earth.

Carved in sandstone, the year 1836–four

years before they left. Going to America,

going to America! Above in pink profusion

a row of geraniums with dark green leaves.

Taller geraniums behind burning red. Back,

I am back from America, have come back

all the way over an ocean to be in their town

of Lohr am Main and walk down their narrow

street to the river below, on which they worked

on boats for many generations. Eyes full of

shadows rising to the surface, I drink hard

of Franconian flames in the horse trough.

Questions on a Wall

on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary
of the fall of the Berlin Wall

If there is something that does not love

a wall, is there also not something that

hates a wall and wants it down as soon

as someone else puts it up to keep some

people in and some people out of wherever

they may live or want to live? Why and who

and what is it wants to keep people apart,

friend from friend, relative from relative,

lover from lover, husband from wife,

parent from child, stranger from stranger,

no matter what tongue they speak,

even if it is the same language?

Is there not something about a wall that

encourages people to come out singly

or in pairs or even in packs in the dark

to prowl and write or spray-paint in primary

colors cartoon figures and sayings and slashings,

questions and imperatives of one kind or another

on this stark and hideous man-made concrete barrier:

WARUM HABT IHR DAS GEMACHT?

WHY HAVE YOU MADE/DONE THIS?

Who are you, who, who, who are you,

who are you and why? WARUM HABT IHR

DAS GEMACHT? WHY HAVE YOU

MADE/DONE THIS? Who are you?

Who am I? Why are you you and not I?

Am I not you? Are you not I?

If good fences or walls make good neighbors,

how do we know a good from a bad fence?

What language would we use to tell one another

the difference between good and bad?

Why a no-man's-land between

you and me, us and them, her and him?

Between me, myself and I? A no-man's-...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Songs in Sepia and Black & White
• A Blank Piece of Paper
• Practically with the Band
• Moon of Falling Leaves
• Photography Credits
• About the Author