This is perhaps is Malley's most well known poem:

Durer: Innsbruck, 1945

I have often, cowled in the slumberous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters --
Not knowing than that Durer Perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men's dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters. 


Copyright © 1995 Dede Pol

Last modified 20 March 1996