BERLIN 2008

A Song of StepsOrphaned.

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 JewNetto.

In between the dead, Eight by eight blocks,

Just sixty fourThe area of ghostly

JewsFrom head to toe;

But from side to sideEight by twenty as well

Netto.

Ghosts broad and narrow,Ghosts casting shadows or casting

none,Ghosts standing still or walking,

Ghosts playing peek-a-booCatching, being caught,

But never grasped.

The frozen concrete

Will not be warmedBy tears of sorrow,

By longing memories,

By life going on.The bottom of Hell

is frozen,It can only turn

upside-downWith sudden

incomprehensibility

Or not at all.

Each block hereA man

A familyA building or

cityA land

A universe.

The deeper I goDown

The Higher the graves rise

Up.At any corner

MeetingOr Not.

Disrupted space.Detached humans.

Amazing maze.“Where are you?”

Emergency exits abound

Among the dead.When aliveThey found

None.

Dead greySharp,

smooth,Hollow, empty,

Endlessly bringing you

Nowhere.

Hell

“GO TO HELL”Loudly printed yellow

Over burning redYoung man’s T-shirt

Spikes of hairPiercing the heavens.

“Hell is here”Said I.

Spikes remained sharpYellow and red screaming,My words brought no echo;

In HellNo response,

Nothing.

On the way downThrough these

gravesYou loseDirection

Connection Elevation

And Hope…

Kids jump aroundOn the way above

From block to blockWith direction,

connection, elevation.

Perhaps such is the way

Of Hope.

What Law And Order!

If you jump around over the dead

A guardResponsible for

the Law and OrderOf gravesOf death

Will extinguish this bouncing life

To let rest in peaceThese deadWho were murdered

By Law and Order.

The Rules In Hell:

No rollerskating.

There is no avoidingSome crash

Holocaust tours flourishing,

Crowds flow from PullmansTo shoot quick shots,To read for a moment,To return to gay Berlin,

All distress left Here.

Once it sufficed to slaughter usIn German;

Now the deed is repeatedIn every possible tongue

So long as regret is expressedAnd photographed.

A hesitant sun-Grey clouds heavy as graves

Hold back unrestrained radiance

Over Berlin.

Vilde Chayes!He wrote at the edge of

despairAnd past that edge.The scrap of paper

backlitCurses Berlin now

From the depths of the dark

And deeply silent chamber.

Leave the chamber.Listen to the scream.

Night Horror

At night I walked to the Brandenburg Gate

And returned by the same way

Unter der Linden.I considered passing

through the gateTo return by way of Horror’s monument

But I was afraid-I imagined

Demons lurking thereTaking drugs

To erase yesterday,

Homeless men needingTo erase tomorrow,Hopeless muggersErasing themselves,Or any old NaziDying to erase me.Night brought out my demons,Placed them in the hollowsOf the Monument for the FallenTo protect the FallenFrom me.

Neither Checkpoint nor Charlie

Passing by time and againI fail to be moved

By the missing Checkpoint.In the Charlie-HouseGripping testimony

Of Escaping and Helping,Arresting, Shooting,

A people dividedBy two other peoples.

But this is all missingHere on Friederichstrasse.

Past has disappeared into present dayOne city, one people,

Living the day, the present –A checkpoint excluding the past.

Charlie has gone away,Charlie has had his day.

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 desksTo save ourselves from

the disasterRipe to be Wrought

By Harper et Vladimir.Now my own children

Are no longer children,Harper and Vladimir

Are glued back to backNo longer dangerous

At least Not

Here.

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.

How to forgive BerlinHer fundamental

grace?

Her people generous with smile and moment

To point out the way backFrom my many errors of foot,

And to offer apologyFor their rare errors of

wheel?

Her gates giving wide passage,

Her universities creating mind’s lebensraum?

Her beer so clear and quenching?

A mother-city opens her arms,

If you can just let go for a momentOf the pain-preserving past;

If you can give respite to hating back-Hatred’s monstrous daughter;

If you can deposit the Horror

For safe-keepingIn its monument-From there it can

escapeNeither youNor them.