For Mike Rogerson
The layout of our local park was finished
the year my mother was born, the year
before the Great War was started, and named
for Alexandra Saxe-coburg and Gotha
née Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg,
widow of the late King. An avenue
of lime trees – and a single row along
another path – was planted. My mother,
the Spring of the year she was war-widowed,
pushed me in my pram beneath them.
Berlin’s Unter Den Linden avenue –
that stretches from the Brandenburg Gate
to the razed imperial palace –
was named for a medieval poem of love
and lust that became a song. ‘Under
the lime… sweetly sang the nightingale…’
As the Red Army encircled the city,
the last of the trees was felled for firewood.
In the scullery of the house we shared
with my mother’s mother, her two sisters
and their step-brother (gassed at Ypres),
the draining board and the mangles’ rollers
were made from lime, and the piano’s keys
in the back room. Under the lime trees
in the park my granddaughter races,
still carefree of history’s absurd
ironies – and, oh, so many loving ghosts.
By David Selzer