Berlin engraving
Oct 2nd, 2009 by vasgar
it was July I was plotting lyrically in a Berlin attic
but all I could manage was to splice a film sequence
with a beggar singing “Katyusha†by the Reichstag
a crowd was flowing over the bridge
each man carried his poem shielded against the day’s neuroses
I thought how suffering lifts up some
casts down others
Miss Felicitas Hoppe had just been reading my poems
from the East
sometimes she smiled and that further enhanced her charm
the charm of a creature specially endowed for nuances
and careful observations
“perhaps we are too logical for the history
we have lived…
the problem is how much light we can shed around us…â€
she said regarding me protectively and without distance
as if she had assimilated the same understanding of life
a paltry hope nestled in us
and we crossed the bridge together
Translated by Alistair Ian Blyth
