Mews

Die Engländer, die nur ein einziges Kunstwort namens Brexit für ihre Abspaltung von Europa haben, haben viele Namen für Straßen. Ich zitiere mal aus einem Internet Lexikon: Wherever there is room for one object to pass another there is a way. A road (originally a rideway) is a prepared way for traveling with horses or vehicles, always the latter unless the contrary is expressly stated; a way suitable to be traversed only by foot-passengers or by animals is called a path, bridle-path, or track; as, the roads in that country are mere bridle-paths. A road may be private; a highway or highroad is public, highway being a specific name for a road legally set apart for the use of the public forever; a highway may be over water as well as over land. A route is a line of travel, and may be over many roads. A street is in some center of habitation, as a city, town, or village; when it passes between rows of dwellings the country road becomes the village street. An avenue is a long, broad, and imposing or principal street. 

Track is a word of wide signification; we speak of a goat-track on a mountain-side, a railroad-track, a race-track, the track of a comet; on a traveled road the line worn by regular passing of hoofs and wheels in either direction is called the track. A passage is between any two objects or lines of enclosure, a pass commonly between mountains. A driveway is within enclosed grounds, as of a private residence. A channel is a waterway. A thoroughfare is a way through; a road or street temporarily or permanently closed at any point ceases for such time to be a thoroughfare. Nicht dabei ist das Wort mews. Das sind im 18. Jahrhundert kleine Stichstraßen auf der Rückseite von stattlichen Häusern gewesen, wo man Pferdeställe und Scheunen hatte. Die sind heute alle zu Luxuswohnungen ausgebaut, und statt Pferden findet man da höchstens noch einen Rolls-Royce.

Sie haben das schon geahnt, dass Ihr Lieblingsblogger inzwischen so berühmt ist, dass man in London in der feinsten Gegend eine Straße nach ihm benannt hat. Den Beweis dafür können Sie hier sehen, das hat die Daniela Ostern in London netterweise für mich photographiert. Jetzt brauche ich nur noch ein Gedicht, in dem das Wort mews vorkommt.

Das habe ich natürlich. Das Gedicht heißt If the Light could Kill Us, es findet sich in dem Gedichtband Bad Fame von dem amerikanischen Dichter Martin McGovern. Das war im Jahre 2015 sein erster Gedichtband, wurde von den Kritikern und seinen Dichterkollegen gepriesen. Sein Kollege David Lazar schrieb im Vorwort: There is an unforsaken paradise in these pages, and a lot of ungodly anxiety. . . . Like Dubliners, Bad Fame darkens, deepens, darkens through its sections, understanding with Joyce the tidal pull of place that will never let us survive if we resist the current . . . the “blue snow,” not of Dublin, but of memory, of Colorado . . . this extraordinarily unique McGovern flair for the Keatonish (Buster) aside mixed with lyrical intellection, these poetic rooms with their many blue lights, direct or indirect, for us to turn on as night comes on. Martin McGovern hat keinen Wikipedia Artikel und ist in Deutschland so gut wie unbekannt. Deshalb ist es mir ein Vergnügen, heute das Gedicht If the Light could Kill Us hier zu präsentieren:

Today has the shimmer of a teen movie.

Our plum tree abundantly pummels 

brick by brick the neighbors' pseudo 

neoclassical garden. That tree is 

oblivious to order. So are the alyssum 

and verbena bushes, ablaze with bees. 

You are still sleeping, flame-pink welts 

our love leaves on your almost 

too delicate skin, brazen in this light. 

Samuel Johnson is dead. And Mrs. Thrale. 

And the kind cherub of a straitjacket 

she kept closeted should reason fail him thoroughly, 

where's that deck-coat now? 
Toothed to dust? A collector's trunk?
Looped around two punks in a London mews 

tugging in the dark? On the ship of reason 

what's a mutiny? I heard, last night, 

our neighbors squabbling over love, 

heard the man leave their house and gun 

his jeep around the block for hours— 

a contagion of chaos. Night's own 

stand against us. This morning, violence 

lingers like the last touch of a season, 

a trail of colored wrappers teenagers leave, 

low-riding to road parties at the city's edge.

Only as I rise to pull the window's shade, 

do you wake, dusted and dazed, as from a fever.