Ratskeller (Munich, 1979)

We are splintering snifters over a memory,
and at a blind corner of the ratskeller
I feel half in touch
with the shattered hour of the people,
the blossoming abandonment of flesh
over scattered chairs.
They are grasping at astral oracles
that spell their wounds in tongues of brine,
eyes staring into the charms of oblivion
as sanity stares into the enchantment
of a squashed lily.

I am too, after all, brackish blood
in a lethargic state of sarcasm.
Now is her shot at “English hour”,
just another load of her big-city girl tribulations:

“I have not touched the nerves of buildings,
Their drowning words and faceless souls,
The rich, their sons, the trampled proles
And their intent, the bribes, the bleedings.
Yet this slow dread of concrete clouts
No purpose serves to veils of mirth,
For other men dissolved in bouts
Of littered hopes, before their birth.”

Chained to her past she remains,
her tongue, arms and lips
are nothing but utilitarian extremities of it.
Just like last evening over dirty sheets.