Tag Archives for European Unity

Darmstadt in the Greenwood

for David Selzer

1986
We’re in a forest. Cunningly contrived
from plastic pipe and card. Lighting makes the
moonlight dance. In the illusion of a glade
we hunker down, imagining the beasts
that nightly prowl, the fears and loves
that have at you in a sword’s breath.

It’s Germany, the land that rose to conquer
Rome, and darken Europe with its soul.
I’m talking, waiting for the speech that
everyone else could make from heart. The wood
entrances, sighs. Moving to the edge of shadow,
I too hear my words – All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.

And so it nightly goes. Our teacher’s troupe
on a cultural exchange, performing As You
Like It on a stage designed for opera
and oompah, in language we have learnt,
to those who Shakespeare was a European
giant, big as Beethoven or Brahms.
Ein sohn und eine tochter aus Elysium.

And out beyond our flimsy world, that packs
so neatly on the coach that brought
us on our theatrical blitzkrieg, the planet
continues on its way. The Rhine heaves past,
removing silt and ash. The cities that we crushed
or burned rise in concrete triumph to the skies.

Cars stream from factories, technicians
study for their grades, and memory recycles
as all pass. Relieved to find we are but people
in the end, we find ourselves at home with
families who feed us pickled herring and
are happy we have come to stay. This Europe
is their home, and we are welcome in it too.

The war is past – the communities and monuments
rebuilt. The Catholics were next, they tell us.
We were on their lists. And that reassurance
is what we’ve come to hear. That even
reputation and survival can be forgiven.
Hope shines from children, parents, players.
Exits and entrances. And all the world’s a stage.

2020
But in no space at all, that candle on the set
is out. Bubbles dance and burst, and time goes
tiptoeing to bed. The hand is thrown away,
age, in its sevens, makes running cowards
of our state. Vergissmeinnicht. A soldier poet
shows a card. We are to leave, to no goodnight.

Passchendaele

31st July 1917

If Europe was at war again
could it ever match the stain
of Passchendaele? The last throw,
the final act to put the sense of war
beyond all doubt. This word,
a mere location on a local map,
eyed with monocular vision by
the wisdom of the general staff,
is now an onomatopoeic standfast
for our times, so easily does it slip
into our tongue, with its Flemish
orthography hiding English suffering
and death. Lest we forget, as many
German dead are counted, but
the battle over numbers never ends,
though together, all no more.

But could we be at war again
when so many days as these
and broken lives and empty
hearts, have made their argument?
If suffering disaster binds, then
selfish statehood surely puts us back
to where we were, when treaties
only bound our continent to making war.

Starting today, 100 years ago
when much of Europe burns in heat
and ending in November when cold
will hold its heart, how right it is
to remember these unnumbered dead.
When those who take us out
of union assert the cause of unity
and peace are not the same; that nations
are better off alone to fight their battles
once again, and seek for allies in
the empire that’s gone.

Ischia
31st July 2017