Berlin Queries
When you ask where something is, in Berlin,
And it’s not there anymore, but gone somewhere else,
They’ll find something else, but just like your wish,
That’s just like your wish, but in a different place.
When you ask what something is, in Berlin,
And it doesn’t look like anything known,
They’ll give it a name, say it’s pure Berlinese
Pure Berlinese, and that’s exactly what it will be.
When you ask* how* something is in Berlin,
And it’s not like that, not the way you’d expect,
They’ll open it up and see how it works,
See just how it works, but deep from inside.
When you ask when something is, in Berlin,
And it’s not really now, but later, then later still,
They’ll give you a tip, to come back at one,
To come back at one, so you can wait till it starts.
When you ask who someone is, in Berlin,
And it’s somebody else, just awfully like,
They’ll tell you how he got where he is,
Got where he is, which is looking like that.
When you ask why something is, in Berlin,
And it’s got no real reason, it’s just what it is,
They’ll tell you, “My friend, this is Berlin,
This is Berlin, where the how is the why.”
Berlin Pub Song
Renata, Renata, your hair is so long,
Can you remember the words to this song?
The words are so cheery,
They sometimes get dreary,
If you know them, just hum right along.
Renata, Renata your eyes are so bright,
It seems they want to sing all through the night.
So set them to singing
While the waiters keep bringing
The unctions that keep our songs light.
Renata, Renata, your lips are so red,
They kindle all Kreuzberg with sparks quickly spread.
When they spin a lyric,
The words sound satyric,
And delightfully improperly bred.
Renata, Renata, your dress is a number,
But those strict leather binds, we hope they won’t lumber
Your movements of grace
As you prance ’round this place
Rousing all our bleak spirits from slumber.
Renata, Renata, your shoes are sublime,
Can they dance to this song and keep to the time?
If not, kick them skywards
And join all us bywords
For purveyors of bad song and rhyme.
Sestina - Meeting Berlin
The sky beams, a solid blue, but as you approach the town by air,
And the plane’s rump follows the dipping wing to bear
Back left to Tegel, you find the world below shaved: a wall
Scoops out one great chunk of town as centerpiece, a mise-en-scene,
A division carved into straps and strains, but unable to plug up the spirit
Of a town that feverishly refuses to bend to borders.
And yet, here is a world defined by borders
Where every day, every move, every thought turns in an air
Clamped by the brace of thick stone limits that could crush a spirit
Untrained in the arts of leaping over limits; more than most could bear
But staunch Berliners use those constraints to set the first scene
Of a whirling drama with a permanent run on both sides of the Wall.
Fretfully poised on their thin scaffolds protecting the Wall
A gaggle of guards hog the view East over the borders
And into the locked-in heart of the drama; they play their scene
Tight, these gray-garbed specters of division who stride the air
Above the defiant glares of their many fellow Berliners and bear
The brunt of a hushed but frothy contempt long brewed in deep vats of spirit.
Such a town should die, in every nook, but a fever of spirit
Keeps it scrambling back, deliriously alive; oh, here and there a wall
Of despair closes off a cornered face, and the thumping ebullience borders
At times on drilled hysteria; but come back so far from destruction to bear
A whole new kind of life, this city can lift its head high into the air
And scream out in its squall of tongues, “Just check out this scene!”
Now those same tongues whip in a storm of barks and dialects, some obscene,
But all full and throaty and funneled into that overflow of spirit
That keeps Berlin the spark it is. Natives claim it’s something in the air
That makes their town a special place: a world preserving hope within a wall
Of novel accommodations to its artificially drawn borders.
Secretly, everyone knows this town can take all its traffic can bear.
Big, wild, smelly, growling but lovable – this town whose symbol is a bear
Shares enough of that symbol’s traits to claw out its own totally unique scene.
You come to Berlin to get rid of that sense of security, to dare borders
And reach across a cleft of forged suspicions to grasp a spirit
Bridging East and West, past and present, horror and glory, licked by no wall;
Behind history’s wounds, the spirit thrives and is gulped like the air.
History and divisions may bear down hard on its stubborn spirit
But here is a scene of other exits burrowed through that Wall,
Leaving all its tangled borders vanished into thick air.