"XV" by Troy's Work Table.
Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.
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"Die Jahre sind nun nicht mehr wie die Wogen / Wenn sie das Meerschiff senken oder heben" and "Die Spiegelwelt in ihren blassen Farben / Erging sich im Verwandeln ohne Lust / Ich wendete mich nieder zu dem Blust" —from "XV" by Walter Benjamin, as found in Sonnets
"No longer do the years resemble waves / When they draw down or life an ocean vessel" and "The mirror world in its pale hues / Did give itself to transformation without joy / Stooping to the water-bloom" —translated from German to English by Carl Skoggard
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Walter Benjamin wrote 73 sonnets in honor and memory of his friend Fritz Heinle after Heinle committed suicide at the start of World War I.
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These sonnets are "love poems" to a friend. They are filled with loss and longing. They are filled with meditations upon death and the passage of time.
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Sometimes translator Carl Skoggard uses archaic English (thee, thou, hadst, dost) to reflect the German that Benjamin was using at the time. I have to trust him that it is more authentic than contemporary terms. (It doesn't happen in this particular sonnet, though.)
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Sonnet XV starts a set of poems that alternate between images of the sea/waves and Spirit/wind. A ship and its sails are being pushed about, blown toward some indeterminate destination.
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Then, as with Heinle's life, the images, the lines, fade away into "deceiving August."
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