Feet-in-the-ashes
by Josh Wilson
In the cold city full of light and joy, littered with political architecture, low, massive, impenetrable, abandoned, fallow, burned and rebuilt.
Wurst in the train station where I
Bought postcards they were all of the
Fire of 1939 and of the Wall
The ruins of which I stood upon
Oh times change
The (young) clerk threw in some touristic scenes — glass new buildings, smiling families, because he didn’t want me to only bring home those ancient memories when he lived in such a new city.
Near-enough by
About two hours by train the
Only thing they put in the
Furnace were lumps of coal
Dense dull-sheened shards
Thick with fossil memory
It was cold, that time of year, and the captain of the local American-rules football team sold us an ounce of leafy weak grass.
We brought some into the city
Rolled joints and wandered
Around the Bundestag
And the Brandenburg Gate
Smoking
Avoiding politzi
Thinking about fire
Berlin and Magdeburg, November 2006
Josh Wilson is a San Francisco writer and editor with diverse interests, including cultural advocacy and media reform. Learn more at the-fabulist.org and watershedmedia.net.
