Illumination above Germany (1970-1976)

Long I watched your light arrive, from east to west, now enmeshed
from dark to dim to light! Your arms no longer severed from your body—.
O Munich, Munich! Evermore —dancing on your wooden floors
drunker than a skunk, young men, young punks, young everyone
Oktoberfest tents, tents, tents, echoes everywhere with bronze horns;
a taste of flavored birch-beer, swims down pleasing to my guts!
Ah! an endlessly serge, the Oktoberfest—of ‘70!)—: down, down
pour it down, down, backed chicken all around, light arrives…!
The Black Forest,’ of Bavaria: wherein the beauty of its deep
resides, where no sunlit gleams within, where is the tender sky?
Too much white, too much gleam, too many trees—lovemaking
on leather seats, cramped in the front like birds in a tree!...
Nothing penetrating, but white, white, restless white…!
Here, yes here is where splendor dies, with cold memories.
Augsburg there’s an old Roman wall of stone, homeless
looking, as if a dog left a bone, forgot to retrieve it—.
This old ruin: soundless, secretive she stands, unbothered under
the grave sun: can’t find the doors only old mortar and rock,
I wonder what’s in its cryptic past, surely Roman death, death
I cannot answer why, but the blood runs faster, faster, down
my neck to catch up with its sardonic past….
Along the banks of the River Mosel high above the lower hills
Are ancient orchards fresh and mild?—Castles with valley breeze!
That was the Mosel for me, back in ´76. Cochem commands the Mosel´s slopes
formed by volcanic upheavals, long ago—here the towering Reichsburg blows
Bows to the Valley River below to its mighty volcanic slopes…!
It is marvelous in all senses, to have walked on these ancient stones
to have carry memories of this marvel, to cast light on this—long ago…,
Heidelberg, an ancient courtyard, women carrying men, like children
carrying dogs, five-hundred years ago, such a victory, but for who?
Walls and halls battered. Johannisburg Castle—the Pink Palace
Down around the River Main: Pink-sandstone, king size courtyard
simply majestic, Aschaffenburg´s gem! Wuerzburg´s also a legacy.


Note: The author lived in Germany in the 1970s for five years, and has seen much of West Germany, and enmeshed within this multi rhythm poem is his experiences as a youth. No: 1922 7-28-2007