Durs Grünbein

V

And at night the silent German city,
austerely north-facing station,
using street lamps sparingly as question marks

and behind every sentence a period – how many watts?
"What became of Xanadu post-Kubla Khan?"
"Who are those gray people, scrabbling around like mice?"

Like Islamabad-on-the-Elbe . . . The fantasy mosque
Puffed out its cheeks and summoned – from the abbattoir turrets
to the big garden – the faithful to the fast.

You hadn’t left the station before you heard the first "Nee."
And saw giraffe necks, long floodlight stanchions,
craning peculiarly, hunching round the soccer stadium.

The Blue Wonder was the name of a bridge upstream,
a somewhat unmotivated construction. Still, it stood there,
handy and cast iron, useful in the postwar jungle of the city.

Along the scuffed banks, worn brown in parts,
you still encountered massy baroque. Some souls might find
their personal Angkor Wat there in the chilly moonlight.

IX

Dresden, leftover city . . . a death trap
For angels, left stranded here by the War
Before they could fly back. Buried under sandstone
And basalt. Circus animals

Were the last creatures they saw fleeing
Into the fire. A horse that could count,
And Blake’s tyger. None of them a monster,
Compared to the smart boys, the pilots,

Who went after man and beast on diving raids.
They did their stunts without a net or trapeze
Above the arena. The charred
Apostles on the roofs stand there in dismay.

X

After no more than a second, it was as though
she’d been gone for hours.
- Proust. Swann’s Way

City in the blizzard beyond your misted glasses –
your first visit home, you lost them and didn’t miss them.
You’d have to go to Christmas carols
to find silence as thick as that outside the station.
A pair of red ears and a pale face in the snow, and that was you.
At liberty, thanks to an army exeat.
The uniform restricted you to small jumps for joy.
But for a kangaroo you showed a lot of patience, out in the deep freeze.

No one was there to meet you. In your own city,
you were a stranger at last. The life behind net curtains,
the burlesque that carried on till the last one said, that’s it, I’ve had it . . . ,
from your standing seat, it looked like a big panto.
Never again would you have prayed so fervently
for the beauty in the streetcar, used to orders, to flash
you a smile. Anyway, as you soon saw, family
life went on without the prodigal – what was he now?