I remember it well

I remember it well:

it is one of these engravings. Perhaps

an Albrecht Dürer or Moritz Schwind

from a book I have looked for a hundred times

when I was sick and alone in our Tartu flat

with my temperature rising. The heavy book

was on my lap. I entered it

somewhere in the middle. I was close to a German town

at the riverside. The water was still, there was no wind:

the great glassy medieval silence filled me

with a strange feeling. There was no movement,

no time, no life. Or perhaps movement,

time and life were too slow for me to perceive,

as I wandered there under the voiceless walls,

windows and trees – no leaf trembled. A man,

barefooted, was sitting on the hill and reading a book.

I passed by, I went through many cities,

hills and landscapes. I arrived in the 20th century

where everything is moving so fast, where everybody

is so nervous, where the medieval stillness

is broken to pieces, shattered, become a whirl

of colours, lines, spots, sounds and shrieks.

I came out of the book at a picture by Edvard Munch,

full of the same fear and anguish as in the days

of my childhood, days and nights of fever.

It was long ago. I had nearly forgotten the book.

Now, forty years later I recalled what had happened.

I found the book. I found the engraving, a Dürer.

It was very much the same. Only when I put on my glasses

did I discover some very minute changes. Some leaves,

some hairs in St Anthony’s beard had moved.

He had bowed his head an inch lower than before.