German Interlude (With Detours) 23 Poems Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Ahrweiler Cemetery
The leitmotif of my childhood's
Peeling stucco. The adults
I knew are as stuffed parrots now
Alive in memory only
How quick are the dead forgotten!

In the graveyard in Ahrweiler,
Two gravediggers siesta in their van
The lemon sun, strong on their workman's caps
A pile of fresh dug soil's on the tarpaulin
Near to the van's left wheel

Heinrich, Jakob, Carl, Hubert, Otto
Lie under low black crosses labelled ‘soldat'
1914-18's inhuman harvest

Ludwig & Fritz, two rows across the grass
Culled, like the Johns and Jacks across the sea
War makes comrades of enemies in the dust


2.Market Town (Ahrweiler)
From the sluggish stream of shoppers,
Women nibble at bargains like rising trout

A ponderous carp of a Fraulein
Tugs at a belt, nudging a motley trail
Of scarves aside.

A pike of a German farmer
With ponderous white whiskers
Circles the shoes, then drifts away uncaught

Children, out in a party,
Are a feeding frenzy of tiddlers
Snap swallowing chips and pasties
Weighed in the scales of wanting versus needing
Cuckoo clocks perform their pop-go trick
Candles flare ‘Buy now…repent at leisure.'


3.Flat lands
Hobbema-like, tall avenues of cypress trees
Are framing a still canal, . a silent farm

A goat, a horse, a donkey, share a paddock
Two fields away a herd of Friesians graze

In the parallel world of the high-speed motorway
Night falls like a Van Gogh sky
Brilliant stars of traffic endlessly pouring


4.Old Otto's Proverbs
Take heed of friendly enemies
Barking dogs don' bite
One log doesn't burn alone

Old foxes are hard to trap
Good swimmers often drown
A steady drip carves stone

Just as one callas to the forest
So it echoes back
Deep calls to deep, ochone

Don't sell the bear's fur
Before it has been killed
Sweep first, your door at home


5.Rhenish Inn
Four steps up from the road,
Vine leaves hang from the roof, a god's bandana

Within, crossed halberds,
Pinned to a white washed wall

Heavy clumsy, ancient, wooden carvings
Oil paintings rough in theme and execution
By plodding craftsmen taught by a lesser muse

Under the beams, ten German painted beer mugs
Recall calamitous tragedies, love tales, battles
Four hundred years of history
Nobody here remembers.

In the corner, a sheaf of sticks
A witch's broom? A harvest ritual?
It's open to conjecture. Why would you ask?

Vintage customers, their noses sherry red
Sit brittle as last night's frost
Watching a flickering candle wick burn down

A waitress, apple-strudel fresh and sweet
Plonks down four foaming pints like a Roman offering

Night drips from darkening hills
A home-made waterfall dribbles in a pool
Watched by a baleful frog on a stone ball
A rotting wine-press leans on rusty legs

A sliver of amber liquid, pools on the table
Complicit in the ancient rites of Bacchus


6.Pigs
Ten fat pigs sprawl sleeping
Drumskins of stretched pink skin

Their nipples are seams of tight rose buds
Their long white lashes are sealed
Dreaming of porcine idylls
Forests of acorns
Fabulous boars with tusks like corkscrews
Could rip a man's soft belly with one thrust


7.Letter to a Dead Father
Brambles sweeten the ditch
Dying wasps put the sting
In summer's fox-fire tail
Moss thatches rooves and paths
Round ancient lawns.

Clouds lie like ships at anchor
The season has tuned the first page of October
Shorn rowans rattle crimson shriven berries
Yellow horse chestnut leaves
Hide conkers polished deep
As the shining lids of classical grand pianos

Two blanketed horses graze
In a pool of sun, their breath
Like mist, rising from steaming nostrils
The Bens are showing petticoats of grey

Dead father,
This is the land that begat you
Here, speech was set in tracks
For Gaelic carriages

That train long gone, the lilt
In your voice remained
Keeping the tongue in the groove
Scots with a Highland burr


8.Bus Trip, Stirling-Callander
This mild day of September in the Trossachs
A youngster with a chest as big's a skip
Dreadlocks pinned like crampons up the Eiger
Yatters in Yardie to her blinged-up beau

A workman's raining chips across the pavement
Too tired to cup the cardboard box together

Two mingers kiss and cuddle on a wall
Proving beyond all doubt that love is blind

Chantelle, Leanne and Kylie whoop and giggle
Their fingernails are sparkled pink and green

The sun comes sneaking low past thunder skies
Dunged Ayrshires nuzzle clover, flick flies off

The burnished corn, circles a resting combine
On cloudy braes, far off, a wind farm turns

A wood lies felled, raped like the Sabine women
Its resin bleeding on the forest floor

Sheep, white as bleach stand sheepishly together
First frost has lit a fire amongst the rowans


9.In a Handbag, Darkly
A very plebeian vole with no credentials
An aspadrille from a phone booth
A cellophane love heart
Three grapes from a Delft dinnerplate
A right old Pussy Riot
A farewell gesture
A rusting precentor
Three guffawing toads
A phalanx of chewing gums
An extinct harmonica
A Freudian Chinese urn
An ancestral larynx
A nest of tongues
A very excited avocado
A Byzantine penis
A processional of bedbugs
A clarinettist's jockstrap
A mother of pearl urinal
Five Confucian slippers
A buzzard's Rhapsody
A republican seagull
Death, dressed as a cucumber
A necklace of wasp stings
The scent of a plastic daisy
A dried turd on a horseshoe
The sound of two hens clucking
A horizon of hyenas from Troon
The tattoo from a barmaid's breast
A rag-mat in progress
Three hairs from a spiritual cat
A counterfeit catkin

10.The Cabinet of Curiosities
A derailed train carriage
Two rooks in parenthesis
One grass wellington
The shutter-click of a snuff movie

A Cornish conundrum
A colt revolver purchased by a horse
Chopin's favourite teddy
An ampersand's love story
The bed socks of a serial monogamist
Charlotte Bronte's keyhole
A figurine of Keats as the Infanta's dwarf

Suetonius's spitoon
A slice of Scythian lamb
Montezuma's underpants
A mermaid's scratchcard



11.Pawns
The fall of the World Trade Centre
Brought one particular Scot to early dust
A Lewis man who'd studied at St Andrews,
Classics, philosophy, not politics
Intelligent, funny, loving an argument
He liked the American life, its spirit of optimism
The tragedy being he nearly survived the attack

Six weeks after, his body was identified
On the second floor of the building,
Along with some New York fire fighters,
Killed by falling masonry

Three days before he died
He called a friend, to tell her of his wedding
Excited, looking forward to settling down
The marriage planned for October
A date he'd never keep

His funeral was held back home in Lewis
Where Gaelic and English meet under windswept skies
And Eagles live alongside gleaming otters

Here, in the summer months, folk still cut the peats
Sundays remain a very special day
For centuries in the sands of this quiet island
Walrus ivory chessmen lay at rest
Pawns in the Viking power games of the past
Where church towers toppled, licked by flames of hate


12.The Lark Person
I'm a morning person.

When others rise with their tongues all fur
And curse and stumble and grunt and gurr
With fallen arches and brewer's droop
As snappy's a bite of shark's fin soup
I'm up with the lark, unbearably bright
Having slept the sleep of the just all night

But after work, when the daylight's done
And others jig on the party run
I'm scratchy, crotchety, limp, half dead
Let the world go hang! I'm off to bed!


13.Father
A white umbrella-shaped cloud
You floated over my childhood

Occasionally, you became a stallion's back
Charging me off to whinnyings of joy

At night, you were a ball of unravelling wool
My fingers tangled up in, keeping me safe

At the last, I could not hold you back
From your rendezvous with our ancestors

Now I repeat your lessons
Like catechisms, father's runes for being

14.Hanky Panky
Hanky panky, slap and tickle
Bertie the Prince was fat and fickle
He had a room in La Chabanais
The bawdy house for that old roué
The prince had a tub where he'd often pour
Prime champagne on his favourite whore
And a love seat built for his weight and girth
To rest the buttocks of Royal birth

The rooms were designed like Old Pompeii
Moorish and Indian, Japanee
Where the famous came to get in lather
And pay for a session of ‘how's your father'

Dali the artist, bought that tub
From Madame Kelly's most infamous club
Where the dwarf, Lautrec and Maupassant
Were often among the frolicking throng

Dietrich, Bogart and Goring came
To visit this house of dubious fame
Hanky panky, slap and tickle
Mony's a mickle makks a muckle

15. What the Dickens
My childhood memories all belong in books
Charles Dickens' world of orphans, heroes, crooks
Dombey and Son, Bleak House, The Haunted Man
Scrooge, Fagan, Little Nell, Miss Havisham

The Uncommercial Traveller, Little Dorrit
Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit
Oliver Twist and Nich'las Nickleby
A Christmas Carol, Pictures from Italy

The Cricket on the Hearth, Pickwick, The Chimes
Tale of Two Cities, Household Words, Hard Times
Mystery of Edwin Drood, Our Mutual Friend
Great Expectations…Treasures without End

All the Year Round, Old Curiosity Shop
Adventures for a lonely child non-stop
With David Copperfield, Uriah Heep
Mr Micawber made me laugh and weep

Bill Sykes and Mr Gradgrind, Magwitch too
The poor, the rich, sketched vividly and true
These creatures stepping from Charles Dickens'days
They are my oldest childhood memories


16.October Journey
The sun, forgotten friend, beams bright and high
Over the rain-sogged fields where Friesians graze
In their spilt shadows. Swirls of starlings fly
Through ragged storm clouds. A heraldic blaze
Of pheasant, postures, pegged on wooden gate
A badger gruff-grunts off into herbage
Behind Dinwoodie Mains on grassy knoll
Sheep crop the grass in their short span of life
Each brute face black and wizened as a troll
On a tree's veins, cow and his sooty wife
Enjoy small nests of sun blinks on bare boughs
The wind has stripped elm clean's a carving knife
The rain returns, pit pattering, parts the leaves
Wetting the crimson leaves on ancient eaves


17.Europort Holland
The shipping lane's a float of fairy lights
Strung out along the Channel's chilly waves
The Pride of Rotterdam flings Shetland shawls
Of delicate white foam beneath her bows

I am out of my element,
Trying my sea legs briefly.

Europe's lights are studs of steely stars
Where Hans and Pierre, Monique and Ludwick
Rise to begin the grinding round of work

We pass the Cosco, silent sullen city
Its seamen sleeping under crates of tin
It ploughs a steady furrow to our stern
Cranes like tall giraffes await its cargo

Inexorably, the ship slides into berth
Wind turbines wheels in giant chorus lines

And then, a desolation of machines
Apocalyptic landscape bare of life
A building site of mud, the bones of roads
A landscape bleak as any battlefield
Of cranes and giant silent storage tanks

18.Germany
Forest and copse and glade and dell
Germany grows them and grows them well
Motorways, pathways, lined by trees
Traffic and trade, with boughs and leaves

Strongest muscle in Europe's arm
Lacking in Greek or Spanish charm
The old, old tale of cricket and ant
Germany prospers where others can't.

Fenceless fields, no waste, no muddle
Efficiency breeds in every puddle



19.A Proverbial Poem
He could tie the devil to a pillow
Though that herring does not fry here
He who eats fire, craps sparks
But to sit on hot coals, how queer!

An old roof needs much patching up
Like pissing against the moon
A fool will gnaw on a single bone
Cracked walls must fall down soon

He'll bang his head against a wall
And find the dog in the pot
If blind leads blind both fall in the ditch
Fear makes old women trot

Where the carcass is, there's always crows
To the wind you should hold your cloak
Leave at least one egg in the nest
Warm yourself at another's smoke

What is the good of a beautiful plate
When there is nothing on it?
Horse droppings are not figs, nor are
Two fools beneath one bonnet

20.Along the Rheine
A hare, meticulous as a Durer drawing
Whiskers twitching German puppet-like
Savours the Northern breeze, its pulses tingling

Trains, precision-timed, shoulder
Processions of cars, a long death rattle

Cormorants' round dark eyes seem unable to pierce
The impenetrable rolling currents of the Rheine,
Hanging their shaggy wings out wide to dry
On perilous rocks mid-stream, in khaki water

Ferries glide unmolested past shops of cuckoo clocks
Cafes serving bread, cakes, goulash, soups
Castles rise like ghosts from morning mist
Leaves are burgundy, cinnamon, lemon, coffee coloured

A lorry with its carapace of steel veers off to Ludwigshafen
The ubiquitous graffiti is edgy
Like tattoos on the hips of flyovers

Suburban streets are drenched in plane and linden leaves
Statues wear speckles of rain
Sycamores launch their peaceful parachutes

Dawn dissipates down gullies drenched with dark
A eucalyptus bares its brittle bark

Cattle raise their heads from nonchalant chewing
Day goes rollicking off to beer gardens, a ganglion of grapes

The shores are invaded by tourists, loose cannons
Eyeing Gothic script, Lutheran churches
Firing off euros with guttural schoolboy phrases
Dobermans bark sharp as pistol shots

Like broken angel bones white pebbles roll in the water

The roiling Rheine roisters between the mountains
Rough rocked, gold seamed in the sun

On the ferry, a baby squeals, three louts
Spit into the waves. Stiff jointed grandparents
Watch ducks skitter over the current

Sturdy taciturn bargees tether their boats
Vineyards arise each side like an amphitheatre
Dizzying slopes, where the goat's-foot pickers toil

At night the sun will sink like a concert hall
Grown quiet at the end of a Wagner opera

21. Ferry
Philippino workers toil in teams
Dispensing coffee, butter, jams and creams
Channelling chaos to an ordered queue
Of folk plate-piling past, now one, now two
Just one seat madam, what no friend with you?
Sit by the window then, where there's a view!
Passengers press drinks from hissing pipes
Arthritic, apoplectic, thrifty types
The perishable cargo, humankind
Must watch the sea by thick portholes confined
Thus fewer suicides jump off the boat
Less paperwork, a castle with no moat

The cabin door shuts tight, a coffin lid
Dishevelled guests from peeping toms are hid
The tidal swell rolls over, high and wide
The ship, tilting the world from side to side

22. Moselle
Rapunzel Castles loosen their hair of mist
Goat-nimble workers tend steep terraced vines
Sheer as dry-ski slopes, the wine rich hills

The Goethe on the khaki coloured Rheine
A paddle steamer follows a coal-barge wake

Winningen's timbered houses circle the
Wine-witch fountain. A dusting of thin rain
Sprinkles unfolding umbrellas. Clouds increase

Near Alken, two swans and four pigeons
Nuzzle the waves. A jetty cormorant
Plunges into the tumult of the water
Bobbing up behind the rocking ferry

Echoes of Brothers Grimm are in the air
The rocks, gigantic, gnarled trees, enchanted.

23. Gretna
At Gretna, the anvil of trade is white hot
Fingers palm out pounds
Crowds pick over bargains

A squint eyed cat blinks
From the scrap stuffed bin
On its plinth of trodden cheese
And smears of gravy

Here comes Scotland, eyes
Peeled to the main chance
The right side of a bawbee

Coaches slide in and out
Sighing like shuddering whales
Disgorging loads of Jonahs
From Perth to Pittenweem