Swiss Dispatches, Part 2

[lnhammer]

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

When I left off, I'd barely gotten started
    Describing my own Switzerlandic scene
When lazy patience broke, and so we parted;
    Now, to fulfill my promise: telling where we've been.
    I'll skip my setting this time, for it's mean --
A transatlantic flight, the middle seat;
I'd rather reminisce about what's neat.

But how to slice this journey into bites
    That I can chew in free and easy rhyme?
By altitude -- the sights arranged by heights?
    By types of cheese we tasted at the time?
    Pure chronologic's a poetic crime:
That's just the skin, and here I need the bones.
I'll organize this by cathedral stones.

We took in several münsters on this trip,
    You see -- such as Geneva's Church St. Peter,
Where Calvin preached (a landmark I could skip),
    A good old gothic pile -- as such I greet her,
    Saddened a neo-classic facade could defeat her.
It's cosmopolitan, just like the city --
As architecture, it is such the pity.

Beneath the floor is better than what's over:
    The church's archeology is on display,
Extensively, what walls they could uncover
    Layered pre-Roman to the gothic day --
    A city's broken labyrinth, silent, says
(Excuse the rhyme, but we've hit turbulence)
It's always a busy place, and will be hence.

That one was better food than Zürich's three
    Snacked up one morning near the railway station:
The Romanesque Grössmünster, supposedly
    Founded by Charlemagne's own proclamation;
    Another Peter's Church, quite Reformation;
Fraumünster's modern neo-gothic hall
Redeemed from plain by stained-glass by Chagall.

Perhaps we should have given them more time,
    But we'd no mind to linger in the rain
That, even over, chilled our tower climb
    To see (by hills) we weren't on a plain.
    -- And yet it rained in Basel, when again
We visited the Münster on the hill
And stayed for hours -- it enchanted still:

Red gothic sandstone soared above the nave,
    Solidly thick from crypt to upper spire,
And monuments such as Erasmus' grave;
    Carousel music echoed in the choir
    And through the window, a ferris wheel swept higher
Than towers rising in the Rheinish air --
The Platz was hosting part of the Fall Fair.

But what of Interlaken? There were no
    Cathedrals there -- just Alpine majesty:
The walls, unworked, were massifs topped with snow,
    And slanted light stained meadows autumnly --
    A church of Nature there for all to see.
But here, we've landed -- both my plane and verse.
I'll end with this before the stewards curse.


Mostly written as described (even the turbulence during that line, though it doesn't excuse the rhyme), except the last two stanzas were only sketched at the time and completed the next day, along with some other revisions. Even with cleanup, though, it was even faster writing than part 1; blame my comfort with the stanza, after writing so much in it the last decade. Links are, again, to relevant photos.

---L.