photos: otto buchegger & christoph melchers
GIRL IN HOLZMARKT
(for Susanne, from a photograph)
Near Heckenhauer’s snoozing bookshop,
where Hesse once shelved poems,
you are standing
frail,
arms crossed lightly
in the pouring sun.
Your fine cheekbones
in shadow,
drenched face
in thought,
you listen deeply
to the bright street-harpist
plucking music from the day.
Your hair is flowing
black in the fine afternoon;
you are obviously a thinker,
fragile as a cloud;
withdrawn you are
yet still stand out
in this basking, strolling, crowd:
I think your name is Susanne
and I see your skin is milky;
and I wonder,
twelve years on,
where you have gone.
I sense
that you’ll have babies,
they are plainly in blue eyes,
and, in that filmic moment,
you do look beautiful to me:
a precious one, you’re trapped
in this snapshot album,
delicate
in not knowing
that the wall has been
pulled down.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
WOODEN HEART: A NEW SONG IN THE MORNING FOR PHILIPP FRIEDRICH SILCHER (1789-1860)*
Through an arch of towering plane trees,
I reach to touch the hips
of an upright Swabian girl,
her lips
fresh with strawberries
from a breakfast bowl of kisses
sprinkled with sugar
and yesterday’s cream.
The birds of the Platanenallee
fly on the wings of melancholy,
the breeze of history
scenting their songs.
It dawns on me
that the rain
will lash against our faces
as we push our way
through the saluting wood.
The day is crumbling already
around us
with the leaves memorably
crunching under our futile tread.
Half way along the soaking avenue,
the sun like a song
sparkles in my eyes
and lights my last hours
with the beauty of skies.
And suddenly
you are there
your lump of a statue
bursting though the leaves,
a kind of terrible stone
trapping your crumbling tunes
inside rock.
To take a frail life
and carve it into something immortal
is a folly as well as a tribute
to the hypocrisy of pompous little leaders
seeking to employ music
for their brutal ends.
So I say
and so we sing
of beautiful glances
and military funerals
of dead songbirds
in the path of bullets.
I climb in spirit
to reach the flesh of this lovely girl,
for a moment
I am happy and then it is gone
behind the clouds of war.
And this is for you Friedrich
from my fluttering heart
in a sea of shaking branches,
reaching out
for humanity
to triumph
over the horror
of the mundane,
a gift of a song for you,
a lovely glass of wine
as the armies march again
into the blind alley
of a bleak despair:
Can't you see
I love you?
Please don't break my heart in two,
That's not hard to do,
'Cause I don't have a wooden heart.
And if you say goodbye,
Then I know that I would cry,
Maybe I would die,
'Cause I don't have a wooden heart.
There's no strings upon this love of mine,
It was always you from the start.
Treat me nice,
Treat me good,
Treat me like you really should,
'Cause I'm not made of wood,
And I don't have a wooden heart.
Muss i denn, muss i denn
Zum Staedtele hinaus,
Staedtele hinaus,
Und du, mein schat, bleibst hier?
Muss i denn, muss i denn
Zum Staedtele hinaus,
Staedtele hinaus,
Und du, mein schat, bleibst hier?
(Got to go, got to go,
Got to leave this town,
Leave this town
And you, my dear, stay here?).
There’s no strings upon this love of mine,
It was always you from the start,
Sei mir gut,
Sei mir gut,
Sei mir wie du wirklich sollst,
Wie du wirklich sollst,
(Treat me nice,
Treat me good,
Treat me like you really should,
Like you really should),
'Cause I don't have a wooden heart.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
*Swabian musician Philipp Friedrich Silcher originally composed the tune, based on a folk lyric, used in the pop song ‘Wooden Heart’. His statue by Wilhelm Julius Frick (1884-1964), erected in 1941, is in Tuebingen by the River Neckar.
UNDER THE TREE: A LULLABY IN STORMY TIMES
(in memory of Ottilie Wildermuth, 1817-1877)
In the ‘Seufzerwäldchen’ (Small Forest of Sighs), at the end of the avenue, is the memorial for the writer Ottilie Wildermuth, the only memorial in Tübingen dedicated to a woman.
Even if thunder rolls,
lightning quivers,
may my little child
fall quietly asleep......
May the little bell sound for me
a quiet peal of funeral bells
when I lay to rest
my brief happiness.
Under the tree,
reading Theory of Colours.
Under the tree,
the light in her hair.
Under the tree,
the birds bathe in dust.
Under the tree,
Otto is breathing.
Under the tree,
the bells in the sun.
Under the tree,
her eyes flash at me.
Under the tree,
her young hips sway.
Under the tree,
sipping days.
Under the tree,
news is poor.
Under the tree,
there is wine.
Under the tree,
no bullets.
Under the tree,
my heart singing.
Under the tree,
Tuebingen lives.
Under the tree,
Tuebingen groans.
Under the tree,
I see for miles.
Under the tree,
I float on the clouds.
Under the tree,
blackbird’s throbbing.
Under the tree,
love life.
Under the tree,
this poem.
Under the tree,
I can sigh.
Under the tree,
feel a moment.
Under the tree,
beauty.
Under the tree,
sense the pity.
Under the tree,
touch this city.
Under the tree,
find distance.
Under the tree,
miles away.
Under the tree,
thinking of you.
Under the tree,
learning Goethe.
Under the tree,
drenched in years.
Under the tree,
drunk
forever.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
ELEPHANTS IN TUEBINGEN
Such a postwar circus,
swill of pigs and drawn out cold war,
the bleeding never stops.
Under the straw,
the claw of a miserable history
grabs down the years
at the young who are innocent
of all the butchery and whoredom.
Imperial Germany is a fagged out colonial office,
a sweating prison
of bashed up ideals,
a broken clock
covered in ticks and leeches.
The animals have escaped
and invade the Market Place.
Elephants sup at Neptune’s old fountain,
spurt out the foam of stagnant days,
trunks curling to taste the Neckar water.
This Tuebingen is a surreal pantomime:
barmaids swing from ceilings,
policemen hang from their teeth.
Frau Binder throws them buns.
And our Max Planck is a dream inventor.
Some boffin of his crosses a peach with a tulip,
the genetics of a bayonet in a breast.
The menagerie moves on to the Castle,
a giraffe nibbles at a church.
The sun gnaws at the clouds.
Like a clown,
I leap to down beer.
And a hideously sweet lady cracks a whip
and flashes her milky thigh at me.
It is no good.
I cannot raise a glassy smile anymore.
This circus is a tragedy.
The animals are sad
and rotten
with the stink of carnage,
seeping
from your television screens.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
I LOVE THE LIGHT IN TUEBINGEN
I love the light
in Tuebingen
streaming down Marktgasse,
flooding in my beautiful blue eyes.
In this light,
I see
the good times
I have dwelt in here
over the bowling years:
the chemistry of Goethe,
the love of books
and poetry that sings
with the joyous swifts,
screeches with
the very pain of life.
This town
casts a glow
in me,
throws me lifelines
to write with,
fishing for ideas
in the sweeping river:
boats
of finished pamphlets
nodding at me
in the sunshine.
I love the light
in Tuebingen
streaming down Marktgasse,
flooding in my beautiful blue eyes.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
