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BERLIN 2008

BERLIN 2008. A Song of Steps Orphaned. No ascents, no descents, No entry, no exit, No up and no down Down here. Just eight by twenty blocks Bis hundert und zechtsig The area of a dead Jew Netto. In between the dead, Eight by eight blocks, Just sixty four The area of ghostly Jews

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BERLIN 2008

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  1. BERLIN2008

  2. A Song of Steps Orphaned. No ascents, no descents, No entry, no exit, No up and no down Down here

  3. Just eight by twenty blocks Bis hundert und zechtsig The area of a dead Jew Netto. In between the dead, Eight by eight blocks, Just sixty four The area of ghostly Jews From head to toe; But from side to side Eight by twenty as well Netto.

  4. Ghosts broad and narrow, Ghosts casting shadows or casting none, Ghosts standing still or walking, Ghosts playing peek-a-boo Catching, being caught, But never grasped.

  5. The frozen concrete Will not be warmed By tears of sorrow, By longing memories, By life going on. The bottom of Hell is frozen, It can only turn upside-down With sudden incomprehensibility Or not at all.

  6. Each block here A man A family A building or city A land A universe.

  7. The deeper I go Down The Higher the graves rise Up. At any corner Meeting Or Not. Disrupted space. Detached humans. Amazing maze. “Where are you?”

  8. Emergency exits abound Among the dead. When alive They found None.

  9. Dead grey Sharp, smooth, Hollow, empty, Endlessly bringing you Nowhere.

  10. Hell “GO TO HELL” Loudly printed yellow Over burning red Young man’s T-shirt Spikes of hair Piercing the heavens. “Hell is here” Said I. Spikes remained sharp Yellow and red screaming, My words brought no echo; In Hell No response, Nothing.

  11. On the way down Through these graves You lose Direction Connection Elevation And Hope…

  12. Kids jump around On the way above From block to block With direction, connection, elevation. Perhaps such is the way Of Hope.

  13. What Law And Order! If you jump around over the dead A guard Responsible for the Law and Order Of graves Of death Will extinguish this bouncing life To let rest in peace These dead Who were murdered By Law and Order.

  14. The Rules In Hell: No rollerskating. There is no avoiding Some crash

  15. Holocaust tours flourishing, Crowds flow from Pullmans To shoot quick shots, To read for a moment, To return to gay Berlin, All distress left Here.

  16. Once it sufficed to slaughter us In German; Now the deed is repeated In every possible tongue So long as regret is expressed And photographed.

  17. A hesitant sun- Grey clouds heavy as graves Hold back unrestrained radiance Over Berlin.

  18. Vilde Chayes! He wrote at the edge of despair And past that edge. The scrap of paper backlit Curses Berlin now From the depths of the dark And deeply silent chamber. Leave the chamber. Listen to the scream.

  19. Night Horror At night I walked to the Brandenburg Gate And returned by the same way Unter der Linden. I considered passing through the gate To return by way of Horror’s monument But I was afraid- I imagined Demons lurking there Taking drugs To erase yesterday, Homeless men needing To erase tomorrow, Hopeless muggers Erasing themselves, Or any old Nazi Dying to erase me. Night brought out my demons, Placed them in the hollows Of the Monument for the Fallen To protect the Fallen From me.

  20. Neither Checkpoint nor Charlie Passing by time and again I fail to be moved By the missing Checkpoint. In the Charlie-House Gripping testimony Of Escaping and Helping, Arresting, Shooting, A people divided By two other peoples.

  21. But this is all missing Here on Friederichstrasse. Past has disappeared into present day One city, one people, Living the day, the present – A checkpoint excluding the past. Charlie has gone away, Charlie has had his day.

  22. Private First Class Harper And Tavarisch Vladimir (to lend name) Once stood here face to face And nearly destroyed the world. As children We ducked under desks To save ourselves from the disaster Ripe to be Wrought By Harper et Vladimir. Now my own children Are no longer children, Harper and Vladimir Are glued back to back No longer dangerous At least Not Here.

  23. Berlin has a place for everything- The wrong place. I pull the door to open it, Here you push it away. I look for the meter on the taxi’s dashboard- It looks down on me form his rearview mirror. I even smiled to “Catch them” With my pants down, Missing a spare roll- But there it was, high up, Beyond reach as I sit; Here you think Before you sit.

  24. How to forgive Berlin Her fundamental grace?

  25. Her people generous with smile and moment To point out the way back From my many errors of foot,

  26. And to offer apology For their rare errors of wheel?

  27. Her gates giving wide passage,

  28. Her universities creating mind’s lebensraum?

  29. Her beer so clear and quenching?

  30. A mother-city opens her arms,

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