Bremen: 1947

Bremen: 1947


Bremen is lousy with Yanks and terribly bombed.
I never dreamt to see such utter, efficient
devastation. Occasional gaunt walls leapt up
to the sunset, much as Egyptian obelisks do
in cheap water colours.

A fleece of clouds was crimson above the West
and ragged in the wind, like a sea of fire,
unquenchable.

The smell of cheap scent, like the remembered
touch of a silk stocking...........
grey clouds across a sombre sky, and all around,
like the dubious security of a residential suburb.........

Is it better to know the agony of solitude,
or is this disillusion a release, a kindness?
My old Gods look hollowly at their crumbling feet
and as I am now without my painful worship,
I feel a new emptiness, a sequestration........

Where ignorance is bliss.........

And yet I know that for the rest of my life
I shall build new temples to my old, nostalgic,
wistful, often profane deities, and, with
a little tremor in my heart, I shall turn away
when the rain dissolves their feet.


Friko

Posted as prose over on Friko's Musings