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Berlin

UNDER THE LIME TREES

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read386 views

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.

 

 

 

CODA

In a black cab on our way to the ballet –

‘The Red Shoes’ at Sadler’s Wells – we passed

the munificence of St Pancras Station

that dominates the six lane highway

and then the removed magnificence

of King’s Cross set far back from the road,

and I was reminded of some of Moscow’s

imitative terminals, and I thought

how a railway terminus is like

a proscenium arch and the track

inevitable like a plot unfolding.

Terminus was the god of boundaries,

the guarantor of happy ends, as it were.

And Moscow’s land locked dénouements came to mind:

Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, Ekaterinburg.

 

For islanders the world supra mare

is almost abstract, fictive, the notion

that the end of land might be days away

impossible to contemplate – like

the stage gone dark, the dancing stopped.

 

 

 

THE FALL OF EUROPE

Lucheni had waited all day in the pines

above the lake. When she passed, he begged.

Her equerry dismissed him. As always,

self-absorbed, she saw nothing: an anarchist

with a grand and personal design.

On the quayside at Geneva, a week

later, Lucheni, the labourer,

stabbed Elizabeth, Empress of Austria,

with a homemade knife. Her husband foresaw,

like her assassin, anarchy: armies

entrenching in Bohemia; riders

galloping from Buda; at the Hofburg,

Jews and republicans!

 

The Empress and her only son discovered

the twentieth century. Rudolf

was cavalry, and a liberal. ‘ After

a long period of sickness,’ he wrote,

‘a wholly new Europe will arise

and bloom.’ Father misunderstood him.

At Mayerling, Rudolf shot Marie Vetsera

and then himself. Elizabeth travelled

from grief or disillusion: obsessive,

dilettante, naive and beautiful.

They died before their time, believing

their neuroses symptoms of the age, the world’s

contours shaped like their hearts.

 

On Corfu, she built The Achillean,

a kitsch imitation of the attic.

She peopled the palace’s emptiness

with statues of soldiers and poets –

like Heine, her favourite. “Another

subversive Jew!” the Emperor observed.

‘Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland.’

The Dying Achilles, nude except for

his helmet, was turned to face the north – Berlin

Vienna, Sarajevo. After

her death, the Kaiser bought the palace,

sold off Heine and replaced her Achilles

with his, The Victorious.

 

Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria,

King of Jerusalem, Duke of Auschwitz,

wore, on his wedding night, dress uniform.

He signed his letters to Elizabeth,

‘Your lonely manikin.’ After he had read

the telegram informing him of her death,

“No one knows,” he said, “how much we loved

each other.” ‘Es traumte mir von einer

Sommernacht.’ Across the darkening straits,

lamps are lit on the Balkan mainland.

On the empty terrace, a march or perhaps

a waltz wheezes from the orchestrion.

Fireflies blink with passion.

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on the site in May 2010.

CIVIL WARS

After the horsemen and the slaves, before
the Stalins and the Hitlers, were the skilful
cities – cosmopolitan, pragmatic,
loud and solemn with towers, spires, domes.

There are some who would reprise a fictive past,
revert from countries of convenience
to imaginary nations, ignore
the corrupting legacy of empire,
the corrupted remittance of colonies,
oil trumping Crusades and martyrdom.

Europe could break like a slate across old
fault lines – a slate smudged with alphabets.
Europe could rub out its history.

There are swastikas in Brick Lane and Berlin,
lampooning in Paris and Soho.
When liberty is assassinated,
freedom is curbed by the rationale
of abhorrence, the politics of outrage –
Jews, Christians, Muslims, the conflicted peoples
of The Book confounded. So, whose Europe?

The cities are filled still with parks and squares.
Storks, pigeons, starlings roost above music
and commerce. After the horsemen and the slaves…

 

 

 

THE FALL OF EUROPE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments2 min read348 views

The Assassin
The Assassin

Lucheni had waited all day in the pines

above the lake. When she passed, he begged.

Her equerry dismissed him. As always,

self-absorbed, she saw nothing: an anarchist

with a grand and personal design.

On the quayside at Geneva, a week

later, Lucheni, the labourer,

stabbed Elizabeth, Empress of Austria,

with a homemade knife. Her husband foresaw,

like her assassin, anarchy: armies

entrenching in Bohemia; riders

galloping from Buda; at the Hofburg,

Jews and republicans!

The Crown Prince
The Crown Prince

The Empress and her only son discovered

the twentieth century. Rudolf

was cavalry and a liberal. ‘After

a long period of sickness,’ he wrote,

‘a wholly new Europe will arise

and bloom.’ Father misunderstood him.

At Mayerling, Rudolf shot Marie Vetsera

and then himself. Elizabeth travelled

from grief or disillusion: obsessive,

dilettante, naive and beautiful.

They died before their time, believing

their neuroses symptoms of the age, the world’s

contours shaped like their hearts.

The Empress
The Empress

On Corfu, she built The Achillean,

a kitsch imitation of the attic.

She peopled the palace’s emptiness

with statues of soldiers and poets –

like Heine, her favourite. “Another

subversive Jew!” the Emperor observed.

‘Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland.’

The Dying Achilles, nude except for

his helmet, was turned to face the north – Berlin

Vienna, Sarajevo. After

her death, the Kaiser bought the palace,

sold off Heine and replaced her Achilles

with his, The Victorious.

The Emperor

Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria,

King of Jerusalem, Duke of Auschwitz,

wore, on his wedding night, dress uniform.

He signed his letters to Elizabeth,

‘Your lonely manikin.’ After he had read

the telegram informing him of her death,

“No one knows,” he said, “how much we loved

each other.” ‘Es traumte mir von einer

Sommernacht.’ Across the darkening straits,

lamps are lit on the Balkan mainland.

On the empty terrace, a march or perhaps

a waltz wheezes from the orchestrion.

Fireflies blink with passion.