6.5.1996 Poem by Volker Braun

I overslept in the Art Hotel, it was raining
Cats and dogs into the Elbe, no breakfast
But a hungry look at the walls
Penck, offspring of no class in particular, has painted himself a museum
Hunting scenes for cavedwellers ART OF THE WEST or
THE MATCHSTICK MEN OF PLANNING, the taxi
Got stuck in the traffic on the Augustus Bridge
Nothing functioned while my mother died
I went on foot, rounding a piledriver
A tool that Antaeus a land speculator
From Libya with his subcontracted workers
The city was torn up like after the air-raids
Baroque rubble, you can stroll in the foundations
And look for the error, in the Chancellory
A dumb pushing and shoving, static artists
They hold out whatever the government
Adam Schreier, Güttler Hoppe and Braun
GO AND SEE HIS HIGHNESS WHEN
HE ASKS YOU TO, AND ONLY THEN
King Kurt the Early Riser
Summoned the still sleepy Academy
To a morning roll-call, my tiredness
Has a more complicated origin, I yawn
From more epochs, my mockery is late vintage
From the slopes of my consciousness
In the place of my instant dismissal
We printed FRÖSI sing and be joyful
Four colours offset TRUE, IF THE CHILDREN
WERE ALWAYS CHILDREN my wideawake brother
Confirmed my political immaturity
The second went over the border without a licence
One of five, that was only realistic
I carried a suitcase for the daughter of a musician
She wanted to study music without politics
Wide awake to the station after a night of love
In the land of Hanns Eisler, a struggler in vain
Against STUPIDITY IN MUSIC
On the way home I became a poet in Germany
Among the stubblefields under a starry sky
A muddy path under my feet, or sand at least
On the corridors of power, my gentleness
Was hard won in the cement factory SOCIALISM the question
Abiding no answer or, as it might be, the answer
Abiding no questions, now in Moscow
The Synod has met to discuss the question
CAN THE APOCALYPSE HAPPEN IN ONE COUNTRY?
And the joke has worn thin, gone bust as it seems
Goldman, my feet are going to sleep
On the parquet floor, we were awake too long
Too awake with waiting for the morning
Until it dawned on us that the morning had been and gone
I was drinking champagne in the Saxon Academy
While my mother was dying, I saw her yesterday
Life in her wasted body, pain
Was twisting her into her last shape, for a moment
She had lost her courage and was tired
A chance to MAKE HER COMFORTABLE, she lay
With her head back and in puzzlement /
Rage she was lifting her arm with the tube stuck in it
And felt at her face and the oxygen mask
Not knowing we were there / not being able to move, today
We find her removed to the cellar, hard by
The door, her chin bound up, her head
Little as a mummy´s, a scrap of gauze on her eye
Still lying, and her cheeks are cold
I´ve got another thirty years to live
I´m sitting at a table with my dead father
It´s barley-soup, the soldier spoons it up
His gun on his shoulder, the soup tastes salty
From the tears that in secret over the stove
Have been mixed in, or twenty
If I don´t get tired, fed artificially
By the times I live in EAST WEST
A MIXTURE says Penck BELOW ABOVE
Speedy deliveries in red and black acrylic
No a separation IN AND OUT
LIFE AND DEATH, when will the poet
Be born, AFTER YEARS OF DEFEAT
AND GREAT UNHAPPINESS WHEN THE SLAVES BREATHE AGAIN
AND THE IMAGES AWAKE AT THE STUPENDOUS VISION.

translated by David Constantine