Autumn Day (Herbsttag)

--Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Lord:  it is time. Your summer was immense.

Across the sundials, cast your shadows long,

let loose the winds upon the open fields.

 

Command the last few fruits:  fill and be ripe.

Grant them a term of two more balmy days.

Compel them to completion, and then drive

the final heavy sweetness into wine.

 

Who has not made a home will build none now.

Whoever is alone will long be lonely,

will waken, try to read, write out long letters,

will wander at a loss along the streets,

turn restless when the wind hunts down the leaves.

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30. from Die Heimkehr, Buch der Lieder, Heinrich Heine

 

They say my heart’s afflicted,

with bitter love oppressed.

And I’ve come to believe it,

as simple as the rest.

 

Your eyes are wide with innocence;

I’ve told you from the start

how dreadfully I love you,

how love gnaws at my heart.

 

Yet only in the mirror

could I speak this way.

Fell silent in your presence,   

not one word could I say.

 

For there were evil angels.

No word would they allow.

Because of evil angels

am I so wretched now

 

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Imperial Guard

 

Lord of the crepe myrtle, peer of the pine trees,

you call out car alarms, out-trill the finches, 

keen so the hawks think twice.

Maniacal mockingbird, manage from your vantage your ménage.

Defy the scrub jays, banish the crows from your turf, 

make the cats cower, hold all at bay.

Your fanned tail and wings are a barred disc, deadly,

displayed as you pose in pointed rise, slow descent,

distinct as the cockade on Napoleon’s humped hat. 

. . .

 

Seigneur de la cerisaie, copine des sapins,

tu sonnes le tocsin de la voiture, surperles le pinson,

 ait réfléchir les faucons.

Merle moquer à folie furieuse, range de ton promontoire ton ménage.

Défi aux jacasses, exile aux corbeaux dans ta quartier,

faire trembler les chats, tous soient à aboi !

Les ailes, la queue à éventail sont devenus disque barré, mortel.

Tu la manifestes en te posant, dans ton ascension mordante, ta descente allongée, 

aussi particulière que la cocarde du chapeau bras bossé de l’Empereur.

. . .

 

Herr der Kreppmyrte, Tannengenosse,
du rufst Autoalarme aus, trillerst die Finken über,
heulst, damit die Falken zweimal überlegen.
Manische Spottdroβel, schaffe von deinem Standpunkt deine Ménage.
Trotze den Buschhähern, verbanne die Krähen von deinem Rasen,
daβ die Katzen kauern, halte alles in Schach.
Ihr aufgefächerter Schwanz und Flügel sind eine vergitterte Scheibe, tödlich,
angezeigt, wenn Sie in spitzem aufsteigendem, langsamem Abstieg posieren,
so deutlich wie die Kokarde auf Napoleons Buckelhut.

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Maison

 

House dubbed in French sounds witty, undercutting the nasty. Events unfold, stately as an alexandrine, predictable as Racine. Everyone is already sleekly dressed. Wilson is obsessed with his hair and his beautifully ironed shirts and fits in perfectly. The accents elevate all the actors. Foreman led his class at Science Bio’, and Taub was an Enarch at the X.  

 

The patient comes in on House’s stint in the clinic, which Cutty has blackmailed him into doing.  Friday afternoon with a nosebleed espèce de l’enfer. Bleeding from an orifice. She is bruised all over, purple as a ripe plum from the Auvergne. Taub always picks up on the psychological angle. He suspects her husband is knocking her around. Mais non, monsieur le médicin, mon époux est super, she pleads. Tout le monde ment, House berates Taub. He punishes Taub by sending him and Treize to break into the patient’s home.  

 

Bad things always happen in Radiology. To the patient. Treize and Foreman s’occupent de busting each other’s chops behind the protective glass. It takes them a while to notice that the patient is speaking German, a weird emergency that disconfirms the first diagnosis. They fear bleeding in the brain and call a code, requiring the crash cart, and if possible the défibrillateur. CDC-type quarantine should follow. This can take place any time before the third set of commercials. Patient gets warned that she now has no immunity, and gets isolated behind plastic walls. Extra point for you if you remember the days before the plastic walls were routine. 

 

House proposes a brain biopsy, which somehow sounds sexual in French. Cutty puts up token resistance, but House blackmails her. Close shot of her fesses in her tight and shiny skirt, or of her breasts swelling her tight sweater:   she shoots him a martyr’s cow-eyed glare. The équipe defies House. They refuse to stir the patient’s brain around in case it actually is bleeding.

 

Oh la la. All the rule-out diagnoses are catastrophique  and require drastic treatments, each of which will kill the patient if any other diagnosis is correct. House, foiled of the brain biopsy, takes bone marrow aspirations, heavily miked so you can hear the crunch, and sends Treize down to the lab to rule out leukemia and lupus and something else beginning with L. House barges in on Wilson, abusing him until Wilson says something inane which provides the archetype House needed to understand the clinical picture. Triumphant resolution, garnished with Wilson’s frites.

 

Dénouement: final diagnosis must have foreign name, or consist of three multi-syllable words. Wernicke’s syndrome is good if you pronounce the final E. Also immunopathic thrombocytopenia purpura. Or anything with sarcoidosis. La scansion, c’est l’essentielle. Better still if someone says the diagnosis so fast that you can’t make out what it was; also if the diagnosis includes neoplastique. Je vous félicite! Your future is assured.

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