Austrian Poem

The pulpit in the Stephansdom, carved with toads and salamanders;

In the Treasury of the Teutonic Order:an adder’s tongue once used for testing food for poison; a Sumatran dagger with handle craved out of rhino horn in the shape of Buddha, with sapphire eyes and ruby eyebrows;

The Ankeruhr in Hoher Markt, each hour the gilded figurine of a celebrated Viennese, shuffling across the dial, and at noon all twelve figures slowly stagger across to a medley of organ music;

In the Schatzkammer, the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, heavy mantles broidered with gold thread, a collar of golden links, and the ram emblem, worn by the twenty-four knights at all times;

The Stiftskirche at Melk,all gold paint and red stucco, and high altar with gilded papal crown suspended above the heads of Peter and Paul, all staged by Italian theatre designers;

Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s catalogue of hunting kills (at Schloss Artstetten), the two hundred and seventy thousand wild animals bagged on expeditions round the world;

The saintly female skeletons glass-coffined either side of the nave in the pink and white Wallfahrtskirche on Sonntagberg’s summit,glittering in bejewelled costumes,skull faces veiled and quills in their bony hands;

The Krypta chamber at Stift Altenburg, where Troger’s students practised the art of the grotesque, death their exultant frescoes’ theme,skeleton archers picking off cherubs with well-aimed bolts;

The Dancing Maenad at Carnuntum, superb buttocks veiled and enhanced by the finely carved drapery,the precise lust of the sculptor etching its geometry;

The seven-thousand-pipe organ in the church at Stift St Florian, beneath which Anton Bruckner lies buried, the old bumpkin in baggy clothes forever chasing young girls and being rejected, retreating to his beloved organ to play with all his soul;

The Great War frescoes in the chapel in Lienz:Austrian infantrymen advancing under fire, pale uniforms flapping like shrouds around their limbs , an army of the dead.