Travellers in a new country, arriving
without change for the phone, between trains,
just passing through. You should have called
distant friends say. Ich verstehe Bahnhof I reply.
Then we meet, drinking in another doomed city,
down streets named for dead soldiers,
victories understood only in the vernacular,
and we with our own debased currency another history
glimpsed in the driving mirror, central Europe
on fast forward: printout, flags, bullets,
disbelief on the faces of the tyrants,
end of system without escape clause. Walls fall and men.
As ever we’re struck by odd presences –
six porcelain urinals in a row, their mouths open,
the white tiled wall, in the half-open door
a brush waiting to be used, our faces in the glass.
There is a perfume called Sorrow.
There are bars, twilight, the sweet dark music of the city,
blossom, the faces of women, but is there time
to write the book of deeds before it’s out of date?