The company is situation across from Raab, the greatest city in the northwest of Hungary. The man from Langenau rides out alone. Lowlands. Evening. The mist upon the saddle glistens through the dust. And then the moon comes up.
He sees it on his hands.
He dreams.
But out there, something screams to him.
Screams, screams,
tears him from the dream.
That is no owl. Mercy:
the only tree on the horizon
screams out to him:
You!
And he looks harder: it raises itself onto two legs. It raises a body alongside the tree, and a young woman,
bloody and naked,
lunges at him: Release me!
And he jumps off onto in the shadowy grass
and hacks through the thick knit
and he sees her image glow
and her teeth clench.
Is she laughing?
The horror.
And he sits back onto his horse
and races into the night. Bloody
laces tight in his fist.
* The second half of the first sentence I added for context. The military commander of Raab, Kristóf Lambert, thought the city indefensible against the advancing Turks, and chose to burn it down to nothing. To this day, the Turkish call it Gyor, Yanik kale ("burnt city"). Cornets Christoph Rilke must have seen it just before its demise.
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