Gesundbrunnen. Healthy spring, well well.
But there pukes across the chemist’s wall
in sick letters, “Germany must die!”
The streets itch with doubts. Perhaps it will.
Train carriages buzz like psychiatric wards.
A locust-plagued Bible-load of forecasts fly by.
Ich reade den paper. Die hälfte der words
are English, a swamp through which a German heart wades.
From here I spy, splashed over a roof,
the mental diarrhoea that is rife:
“Always betray your country!” it dribbles
like petrol into a coral reef.
Now the last slice of the Mauer slithers past,
where Trabants crash through concrete and Honecker nibbles
on Brezhnev. But the future is satellite-paced.
A hotel will soon replace this historical pest.
Stunner Berlin, ill, urban, nuts!
Your stone-tough wall now land-law footnotes.
But who’s this behind a fence outside the station,
flapping like mackerel fresh out of their nets?
Young men born under a hotter sun.
Young men looking for a destination,
and all they have to do is sign.
Young men. No women or kids to be seen.
