LEDGER (LINEN): OR, HISTORY DOES NOT REPEAT ITSELF

by Monika Cassel

Every day the spool
unwinds new fibers
woven into cloth
the loom clacks through
fresh thread spun
for the net each strand
of flax fully stripped

the stalk torn by the roots 
bundled and set to dry 
then retted (once weighted 
down in ponds for a week 
or two now in cement tanks 
inside vast factory halls) 
the stalks then lifted 
from the water dried again 
and cured how little, 


writes Sebald, 
can we hold fast to— 
what all and how much 
is forgotten with 
every life snuffed out you 
could say the world empties 
itself— 


dry now the stalks 
are broken from bast fibers 
combed sorted 
line yarn is spun wet 
so the fibers swell 
this makes 
the thread shine: 


by 1876 Ignaz Seidl’s factory 
employs 600 workers; 
they run 10,016 spindles 
that produce 16,000-17,000 Shocks 
of thread: a Shock, I learn, is 240 Gebinde, 
one Gebinde 40 Draden of linen, 
a Draden 3½ Berlin Ells, 
an Ell 2.33 meters


however the length of a Draden 
depends upon regional 
differences in the diameter 
of the counting-reels on which 
the thread was wound; 
even so I estimate 
some 240,000,000 meters 
of fine linen thread 


Each year anew 
the ground enriched 
by the leavings cast 
from last year’s harvest 
every year an older sun 
and fresh rains to wet 
the lands and the feather- 
green stalks, the trees 
in the hedgerows 
the same only each year 
with longer fingers 
holding out the palms 
of their leaves dripping 
as they watch larks 
spinning beetles winging 
with bees humming the 
fields of soft 
blue eyes: 


so Sebald: stories that adhere 
to uncounted locations 
and objects which themselves 
have no capacity 
of memory are never 
heard by anyone or told to others 
never passed on— 


perhaps once the same 
drop of water falls just 
where it fell before to touch the root 
of this year’s plant: the memory 
of last year’s 
seed stretched out 
to the sky 
now the fiber 
stripped of the matter 
that lived gleams almost 
too bright on a new 
bolt smooth 
when we stroke it 
with our hands 


the table is laid the cloth glows 
soft listen 
and hear again the rattle 
of the spindles

Monika Cassel’s poems and translations from German have recently appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, AGNI, Poetry Daily, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, Guesthouse, Zócalo Public Square, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, among others. She was a founding faculty member at New Mexico School for the Arts, where she developed the school’s creative writing program. She is currently a teaching artist with Writers in the Schools in Portland, OR and an assistant poetry editor for Four Way Review. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.