All
that is left of Wotan
is
a sword in an empty room,
an
empty hall, perhaps
the
hall of the mountain
king.
Wotan himself has fled
to
Brazil or Uruguay or
Argentina,
leaving his spoils
of
the dead for others.
For
those who would enter
this
room, dressed in black,
waving
swords in the desert
of
hate, there is always
the
trap door, which is both
a
door
and
a trap.
Painting: Nothung (Notung), oil and
charcoal on burlap by Anselm Kiefer (1973); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam.
