Berlin ist nicht so weit
For my friend Gerd Hecker
Dusky mobile
Handy, small device.
A husky voice
Komm bitte nach Berlin.
A lengthy pause, a breathy sigh
The smoke encircling
Your pale blue watery eye
Berlin will was erzählen.
Hooked, I hear you smile.
Komm mal, was gibt’s?
You’ve booked. Last flight.
Berlin ist nicht so weit…
From frosty SFX
Your Merc sniffs billboards
Intimating stillborn Grand Coalition.
Berlin kann ja nichts passieren!
Coalesced we glide,
No threat, no change.
Your side or mine.
Entfernt sind London und Berlin denn voneinander nicht so weit.
The ashtray full, Charlottenburger Stube warm
Eggs benedict benighted with your Bratkartoffel
Coffee and tobacco dregs
Berlin ist doch gemütlich, nicht?
Slithy, easy fingers
Playing with your fag pack
Teasing, earnest, sleazy
As you drag me back
While clouds curl round
Your tantalizing frown
With long blond mane caressing
Hollowed cheek and furrowed brow,
You spin a tale of Stasi way-back-when
Their felonies, embezzlements
Their larcenies and excrements
Kannst Du das glauben?
Glancing up from winy glass
To glassy eye, I squeeze your hand,
For Stasi now long gone, my dear.
Natürlich, glaub’ich schon.
Your past, my past.
Our years spin fast
In rewind, worlds apart
You send me hell to skelter:
Hand grips mine
A trot from playground
With ‘Good news, good news!
We’re moving to Berlin!’
Berlin was not too far
We’d soon be home again.
Four years was not too long.
Schon damals war es nicht zu weit.
A father’s furrow
Must be followed
B.H. then Savignyplatz
Berlin war aber doch kein Ersatz…
Neon rubble was my home,
Olympic Stadium my school.
For play the blasted concrete nests
Where Hitler sent his Youth to die,
A stone’s throw from the clay
The Frenchman raised on stilts to signify
The Soviets were here to stay
And Europe could cohabit or fry.
Berlin war heiss, you reminisce
The reclaimed cobble strays you’d raid
Corbusier to chuck at us
The occupying foe. Ach was…
Berliner Kopfsteinpflaster
Granite, basalt, sandstone
Ten by ten by seven
One alone required a plaster.
Granatwürfel, fist-sized die
You rolled our way
And we flicked back, you say.
Kopfflicken. Head wounds, head stones. Schicksalswürfelei…
Und Du wirst schreiben! comes your long-awaited
Cobbled shot, long-hoarded, dice unloaded
To briquette flame and a deep, deep draught of wine.
Du wirst der Autor sein!
I feign assiduous notes and dodge
This Kopfstein with a weary jibe.
For obvious to me, if not to you
That you’re the author, I the scribe.
Klar wird’s was geben…
Cash will flow, if not at first
Like paving stones but liberally deferred.
Als Partner! Du bist der Einzige, der es kann!
Tyres rumble muffled over soaking cobbles
And you build a beer mat bunker
Fit for children dodging Russky tanks
Ich arbeit’ mit Dir noch so gern.
You wave the smoke aside
Routinely. Pour the wine.
It seeps blood red. You wipe, uncleanly.
‘s wird ein grosser Film sein.
Furtive smile like Hanseatic sail
Retrieves, in stone and hail:
Our Putzfrau Gertsch of bloodied knuckle
Worker to the bone, Berlin her gaol,
Defeated twice, by Zhukov
Then by spies, informers all,
Imprisoned first by toil
And then by Wall.
The ride past Checkpoint Charlie
Dead of dawn. ‘Look straight ahead,’ he said.
His V-Mann corpse on Prenzlau cobble,
Mother’s hand across my eyes…
The beer mat watchtower
Teeters, escapees scream
Barbed in matchstick tepee.
Berlin war Zuhause, oder?
So it was but can I hack it?
Why go back there?
Who will listen or care,
When worse assaults us daily sans recourse still less repair?
Ashtray full, you stub
Your fag on china
Drown the nicotine in wine.
Komma, nachts ist ja so fein.
Mercedes hobbles merciless
On self-same cobbles,
Siegessäule boasting victories
Undone, redundant.
Overtaken, taken over
Captive I turn over only
Childhood over and over
Du kannst was draus machen, Mann!
Maybe or maybe not.
Reichskanzlerplatz now something else
The NAAFI gone that fed our troops
By torchlight under Funkturm-Nuremberg,
Corbusier no longer augurer
Of cobbled peace, his place
The neo-brutal harbinger
Of concrete outer space.
Das waren wir, you say
With stoic acquiescence
In a tense so far away
I capture only now its essence.
Stasi, Wall, Savignyplatz
Were only hooks
On which to hang
Our fading dreams, our filmic Kopfsteinpflaster.
Our adventure was the one you wanted
And I grasp too late the sense
You hid like every poet,
Alles ist fur mich zu weit.
I’m dying friend, you meant.
And you are left behind
To speak of me, of us,
An age between, a friendship lost.
Child of armistice, twelve days my elder
You were my best my only hope of fairer weather
Cobbles were the worst and films the best
We threw in peace together.
How could I have missed the signs?
Empty as that ashtray now,
The love, the guile, the sweet seduction
Of those pale blue eyes
No man or woman could resist.
Ja sicher, I reply without conviction.
Wunderbar! You cry without compunction.
Erinnerst Dich an unsere Kämpfe?
Barely. But I see too clear
The cobbles raining round us
With no healing balm to see us through
The night in store.
Our story ends, too soon.
And I am here to write it
With no hand to hold, no friend to phone
On dusky mobile and no husky voice
To ask me how I’m doing
How it’s going, where it’s heading:
Places that we never went or ever might.
Heut’ abend ist Berlin sehr weit.
© Gareth Jones, October 2018
