There’s a line between
Recovery
And running away
Rest
And indulgence
Of needing to find the centre
From which all action springs
And wallowing in its still course
Of taking in
And giving out
Of reflecting
And creating
Of waiting for the right time
And knowing when the time is ripe
Of breathing in
And breathing out
But it’s hard to get the balance right
Loiter
You’re a lotus eater
Leap
Jump the gun
© Ian Lilburne 2010
Three lines divide a tourist from a traveller
Intention
Effect
Depth
A tourist’s trip does not change them
Or only accidentally
They accumulate cities and sights
Incrementally
Names on a list
But a traveller’s journey is inward and spiritual
The places they visit catalysts for
Introspection
Reflection
Discovery
This can lead to change
© Ian Lilburne 2010
It’s official
God never was
Stephen Hawking
Did the maths
And proved
The Big Bang
Fits perfectly
The laws of physics
From nothing
Something came
Our last privilege
Stripped away
From the void
We were made
© Ian Lilburne 2010
And so with sadness
I leave Berlin
A double sadness
At leaving a city
I’ve come to love
And starting the homeward journey
Of abandoning a place
I sense could better define
The terrain of my soul
For one I fear no longer shall
Strange that a mere two weeks
Should leave me feeling this
I’ve barely moved beyond
The fantasy I brought here
Explored but one
Poorly hidden quarter
Seen only the obvious
But the ingrained otherness
Resonates
This magnet for outsiders
Where no one belongs
But everyone is permitted
Casual and cool
But serious
Not to be taken lightly
Or easily dismissed
Like Fremantle for grown-ups
With grander architecture
© Ian Lilburne 2010
Outside
a concrete hexagon
bland
brutal
grey
the compact to the lipstick spire
the other side of the crumbling cathedral
a monument
a memorial
a mistake
Inside
a reflective room
washed in tranquil blue light
as spiritual and moving as any Gothic cathedral
yet out of sync with that aesthetic
the Cold War equivalent
A trembling jewel
hidden
within a dissembling coat
the fractured soul of a shattered city
© Ian Lilburne 2010
Checkpoint Charlie overrun by tourists
Imagine imagining that thirty years ago?
Zimmerstraβe an open street?
The mire of no-man’s-land complete with
Day-trippers and cameras chasing souvenirs?
What better proof of capitalism’s conquest
Than a rough and ready stall
Near what’s left of the old Berlin Wall?
An East Berliner selling hipflasks and flags?
Pretend guards in American uniforms
Posing for photographs?
The Gendarmenmarkt and Unten den Linden
Eclipsing Karl-Marx-Allee
Rivalling again Kurfürstendamm?
No longer ruins but grander once more
Than the zones south of the old Cold War
Just as the final slap on Hitler’s ghost
Was to contain Wilhelmstraβe
And his beloved Chancellery
In the Russian sektor
The old guardhouse looked better in black and white
Framed by crumbling buildings
A makeshift stamp of order on chaos
The Checkpoint is poorer without this sharp border
Everyone’s happier – especially in the East
And rightly so
But the West has lost a certain vitality and edge
However illusory and unjust
A touch of rebellion and difference
That held it in check
© Ian Lilburne 2010
How proud
So punctual
At the Hackescher Markt
Ten minutes early
How efficient (at last)
So early in the day
Our affable guide
A natural wit with ironic eyes
And dramatic gesticulations
Had a friendly Australian accent
Undercutting her German English
It took us more than
An hour to get there
Changing trains at the Hauptbahnhof
For the Oranienburg express
All of us sunny and civilized
Strangers sharing stories
At the final station
We had our first lesson
The hidden stock yard where the
Prisoners were bought
Then made to walk to the camp
We had the luxury of a bus
Into which we were crowded
Like sardines
But not so anyone was crushed
The camp entrance
Ringed by a broken wall
Grey slabs emblazoned staccato
SAC HSE NHA USE N ME
MOR IAL A ND M USE UM
We entered the courtyard
And circled the metal map
The immensity of toy-size huts
Laid out logically
Then the tour began
Our day trip through hell
From Tower A to Station Z
From induction to death
The common way out
From the false hope of
‘Arbeit Macht Frei’
Through dehumanization
And cruelty in
Its myriad imaginings
The glint in our guide’s eyes
Took on other ironies
As anger and compassion
Tears and humiliation
Fought for ascendancy
Her humour now only
To ridicule the inhumanity
That planned this abomination
We all had cameras
And all used them
But some more diligently
Snapping the bathhouse
And every solitary cell
Every barred room and
Straw-filled mattress
Every inmate’s photo and national flag
Hanging on the wall
Or the basement of the
Pathology centre
Where they stacked the bodies
Of the infirmary patients
Awaiting autopsy
The only ones afforded this luxury
Not that the others needed it
It was clear enough how they’d died
A bullet in the back of the head
Machine gunned in the Neutral Zone
Fried on the electric fence
Drowned in the bathhouse
By a bored guard
Who wanted a laugh
To brighten his morning
Or simply hung
Or beaten to a pulp
There were no photos of these
And none to be taken
Though I’m sure someone would
If they’d had the chance
So logically laid out
The huts in perfect rows
Radiating a giant triangle
From the single tower
A panopticon
With a machine gun
An experiment, she said,
To test the efficiency
Of imprisoning so many
Its construction
Ordered within a week
Of Hitler’s ascendancy
An integral part of his master plan
To rule the world
So logical
By the time we boarded the train back
I hated logic
Efficiency
Punctuality
What monstrosities they unleash
What monsters they sanction
Being sloppy is best
Human
© Ian Lilburne 2010
She sits enthroned in a room of her own
In a tall glass booth under an Egyptian dome
Her only companion the bust of the curator
Who ordered and paid for her appropriation
Her strangely angled crown
Alien
Overdrawn
Balances neatly the jut of her jaw
Two fat Germans censor her cell
‘Nein, nein,’ they yell and shout
Every time anyone pulls a camera out
Her plinth is aligned with the doorways
A corridor of galleries frame her
So she rules the entire floor
Her cool one-good-eye gaze
Commanding her presence over all we survey
How rude that she lives here
So far from her home
Even though there was never a throne there for her
Having never left the artist’s studio
Not even finished (that missing eye)
Nefertiti on the Spree not the Nile
© Ian Lilburne 2010
Kranzler’s sun terrace on a summer afternoon
Strains of a saxophone echo up Kurfürstendamm
A sassy busker blowing jazz
A stylish riff sensuous as
If not for the Swissôtel on the corner across
Twenty-one and too clever by half
You’d think it was old Berlin as it always was
Otto Dix characters
Flower box blooms
A seamless panorama
From a circular room
Funny to think it’s only a replica
‘Ein Campari, bitte, mit nostalgia’
© Ian Lilburne 2010
We departed at dawn from the Gare de l’Est
A pale dawn of pink clouds and lofty vapour trails
Soon we were cutting through squared fields
Woods and postcard villages
Every house identical
Colour co-ordinated
Sentimental
Rolling by it was easy to watch
Like Barry Lyndon or Tess
The view itself oblivious to the silver track
That dissects and defines it
A picture window that frames itself out
As the hours accumulated forests and hamlets
Paris receded like a loved summer coat
Hung at the back of the closet
In the cool of autumn
By the time we reached the frontier
It was almost forgotten
How natural that felt compared to a plane
That enclosed tube of films and food
We enter one end and leave the other
With nothing to mark the transition
But time and sky
A no-man’s land where we armchair and read
As though at home
No wonder it takes days to recover
By the time we arrived at the Hauptbahnhof
Late in the afternoon
I knew precisely where we were
Exactly how far we’d come
© Ian Lilburne 2010