For Bertolt Brecht
resource texts CT 1990s-2018
Accidents
In the old parlour
with notices on the door
of control,
intrusion
 by decree, danger
a constant
at her sewing a mother
in a corner
watches the sins
of the father visit,
drown one, take another
of her children
in the low-wattage
orange glow;
come, go
infinite, pure
the silence
===============================
Anti-worlds
White. A last resort
of the damned, a refugee-
any barely edging away:
an interior world; just
privacy in a region
of neglect
and lignite, damp fern,
rock formation.
Freedom, in a zone, caught
at the border, all
love a rebellion; your
very own wall
with dates, a rough name.
Searches are run
during long internal exile,
rubber torch
low by twilight.
*
Watch out. History may call
at dawn, break down your door
hoping you are at home, ready
===============================
Interior: Late Afternoon
The browner wardrobe in the mirror
is guarding an oboe, the veneer
a cracking plastic; the grey
patina of the linoleum
has felt many heels, and the glow
by a table lamp is a dull orange.
Nobody is sitting in judgement
in the interior, even though
another half hour has passed,
and it is known
in every quarter
that time cannot be recovered,
or returned an hour later
to row back over the lake
under a radiant harvest moon!
==============================
In The Park
Comparing likes and dislikes,
they sat on a park bench
throwing stones at the ducks
fitfully.
A dog tried.
Pigeon guns detonated
randomly,
ever victory.
An olive-green attendant
ordered in the dusk,
a blanket
dark gesture, from beyond
the outer railings, early
======================================
Doorway 3
The bayoneted grandfather clock
is leaning toward the tomb
of an underground mausoleum,
in a bordered parchment print
which has taken the warmer sun
of another century,
lingered in the carefree afternoon,
become rather fly-blown
next to a wooden toy.
More than a life of parchment...
There are clouds in the doorway
and, on the floor, crinkled newspaper,
a yellow page in a grounded kite.
====================================
Museum der bildende Kunste
Mirror examines corridor mirror
that swam with a changing terror.
A roaming dog tried
something there and died
eating an exhibit
=====================================
The Treck
(after Huchel)
Howls and screams
from wood and field
Charcoal addition
yet more subtraction
of the tethered
a smoky moon
====================================
Aligned Sunday 3
News that is barely rarely news
and therefore, never any news.
Uniquely corroding concrete.
Fractured block utopian steel.
There are no chickens from Kiev
in a vacancy to an aligned week.
On the grand Allee to the anger
of couples, a rusty accordion.
=====================================
Wet Praesidium
The guardians of the air jet overhead,
diamond aces over the ill-trained.
She eyed a barrister for the tin generals
playing at periodic saluting at cars
a robust study in chrome, and a cage.
At the long parade, nervy, state-ordained
the praesidium of a darker sky
ponders over a still unreported
murder in a stained underground car park
after the discreet filing of a page.
Gazing at the roof; joined the recent dead.
Water began to enter as it rained.
====================================
Long Day 2
Rain beats at the window,
and wind stirs a battered garden:
every grief is in the wind,
and all monotony in the rain.
A low fire in the grate
is smouldering green timber.
Saxony
Haiku
On mahogany
your thin scarf and gloves. Ready
to jolt in a van
=====================================
Coda: Double Agent
for Wolfgang
Lost forever
in Thuringia.
His wife peasant
Stalinist heard
crew-cut fleshy
bad sleep-talk
=====================================
=====================================
Curfew The Baltic
Cold at a step gable
of no obvious age, lacking
a gallant heraldry
she weaves in a low attic
without a radiator, ignoring
the one oil painting
on a damaged coast,
the grey, eternal pressure
and hauling of the tide.
At her long examined pattern
there is no avoiding rain
at a tumbled grave, drift
cloud building over the sea
(the sun a distant fever)
as the intent soldiers march
through the penumbra of her attic.
=====================================
Mecklenburg Bucht
In Mecklenburg, alone with the dunes
the distance like a line of eternity
run through eastern Pomerania
waiting for history to change, a wind
in the gusting sand; alone
with the dunes, out in Mecklenburg
I see you signal on the grey horizon:
another distant age has begun
and it is not ours
yet we continue to intrude
on a history that is not ours,
the leaves are golden in eerie sun
so early in the afternoon,
the winter riding school is over
and the broken, tone dressage
abandoned to limping wolves
in from the coast: today, a windy
flash of water in the sound
empty of you, Rita, signalling...
=====================================
Mecklenburg Bucht 2
An octagonal
balcony has sand in decking
of warped wood, with canvas
shrouding peeling furniture
the children never to return:
today, a windy flash of water
and a bell will not stop tolling
=====================================
Night City
A birth in the tombs,
and the trap door open
the night is a lean cat
hung out to dry,
the moon river ferry
a run of dreams, dawn
a trace of rare light
on brooding brick
=====================================
In Spring '45
She wanted a world with a stair
leading who knows where,
a borrowed balalaika
for telling them who you are
Trying to bend iron with an unkempt look
after running her fingers through her hair
she would enter a gutted labyrinth
with her hands above her head, a soldier
eyeing her dirty summer blouse, open.
The days were apparently endless, lost
eating off the palm of an empty hand.
They gathered round a Biedermeier table
under the tassels of a ginger shade
an hour before it was trashed for a song,
dared not mutter a prayer
before leaving apart, alone
but she did keep a wealth of infinity
and a cube inside herself, white, ideal;
managed to stay at a furtive lengthy kiss
behind the lines, keep to an anecdote
like jasmine raving in August
to survive the spring rapes of '45,
the red fever.
======================================
The Penumbra
Mist clings to their metal.
They tramp the future
*
the worst being, an idea
of perpetual suffering,
of world without end
of exhaustion without end,
a rat combing the hairs of hope
on a rotten treadmill
held together by string and glue
and barely any love for you
=====================================
Foundation Notes for Editors
On February 25th 1947, Prussia
was abolished by Allied Control
Council Law No. 46 in Berlin
On October 7th 1949, the GDR
was founded in the Soviet Zone
====================================
Other Reasons Why
Pivotal events:
Verdun, then a sealed Lenin;
Prussian Generals
who failed to mutiny
after Stalingrad; Manstein
East Elbia, not Bavaria
=====================================
In Silesia
Spring 1945
Did the taut Baron
in final moments
watching his servant
girls in rape, the Red
Army at the door
and on the pile floor
leaving blood to dull
before a carting
off of works of art
in a liberation
think of mad Lenin,
paid by Germany
and a reaping
of the whirlwind?
=====================================
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