Berlin Abschied
after Paul Celan
Black Spree-water of midnight, we drink you in lead moonlit cups of silvery Spree-glimmer, we await the stone trumpet of still-faced Gabriel hovering in silence facing the subterranean Kaisergrab of the Potsdam Friedenskirche
The noise band makes sound dissolving into song, and Pierrot drowns embracing the moon.
Oh Maria, how you braid your lover’s long hair! So close to the end of the world. Your face I found once on a queen of spades when the crackling trumpet of the second coming sweeps across your native Madrid and the stars vanish above Berlin in an instant, and my guts will knot and unknot before the blackness of the sky like poisoned and entangled roots of a polychrome vineyard.
Black Spree-water of midnight, we drink you.
written in Delft, Netherlands