I am fit to drop
in some clattering cafe,
thinking of Martin Luther
(who drank six litres of beer every day
and two litres of wine in the evening)
and soaking my own brain in the booze,
as I donate lost time to the Democrats
and, talking of which,
all the other snivelling political rats
that get up our overfed noses.
And, all of a sudden,
King Silver Tongue’s here,
shooting off
all the usual verbal fireworks,
like ‘Hoelderlin’s as important as fitness!’.
This master of working walks,
this invader of dreams,
screams out of his teeth
and we all raise the glass to our man Kurt,
to ‘Children, Church and Kitchen!’,
in this bookish state
where there are no dreams anymore,
no dance-halls at all,
getting drunk by the exhausted fountain.
I’m a fallen glove in a hushed hangover,
a lurcher
in this centre of unworldliness;
a big lad in a small-minded university village,
a crawling poet on a campus.
Barbecue Boy!
Look out for the bloodstains
on cellar-floors.
I say, ‘No! A million times, no!’;
‘How present the past is’;
‘Soldiers are murderers!’,
and ‘Hermann Lauscher is dead’.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
