'Only now do I understand human beings, now that I live far from them and in solitude.' (Friedrich Hölderlin)
(period photo by Alfred Göhner of circus elephants drinking at the Neptune fountain in Tübingen Market Place, April 23rd 1963)
ELEPHANTS IN TÜBINGEN
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 bitter water.
This Tübingen 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.
HIER KOTZTE GOETHE (GOETHE PUKED HERE)
‘About Goethe, the legend says that he was invited to stay here in Tübingen for a while but on the very first day that he was walking around he couldn't stand the smell of the open channels and did what he had to do.’
Goethe puked here
he did.
Poured out a tide of words
on the street.
Couldn’t stand the smell of war,
the decay of stinking empires,
ugly whiff of bad poetry.
He did,
he puked on Tübingen,
on all the drivel
coursing from the normal text books.
He had to.
To keep his guts open to the theory of beauty,
vomit out the wretched ugliness
from this town’s pouting ulcers.
Clear ‘Coin Alley’
for all the shouting children
to dance along,
for his mate Schiller to rhyme by,
for the swifts to sing
over it all,
over and over again
in this distinct order of loveliness.
On a Monday,
with fruity schnapps
boring away in my gut,
I scraped along,
through a bloodstained subway,
into a grizzly Tübingen play.
Through this fine mist,
the blessed slugs slid
in the park of
lovers and drifters;
with the clap of a scream,
the hungover day
came dawning
into our lives.
The stretch of Wilhelmstrasse
poked out my eye,
my tongue slurped around
in my brain,
looking for verse
to drown the old pain
in the mouth
of a beautiful
waitress.
‘Kiss me out of my misery,’
I breathed in her delicate ear;
she gave me a flash
of a Swabian smile,
a hint of Württemberg lace.
I stared at her eyes the whole morning,
alone by the cafe door;
I injected my coffee with whisky
as crazy clouds winked
through dark blinds.
‘Eines Tages als die Gurke sirrend über das Mondfeld haspelte.’
(‘One day when the cucumber reeled whirring over the moon field.’):
I had had too much to think,
needed the touch
of a swallow in sunlight;
the love of a sky blue hostess
on the wings
of this wasted day.
THE MONTH OF THE ASPARAGUS
It was the month of the asparagus
and you kissed me by the river
with the rain flowing down your face.
It was the day you burst
like a volcano,
gushing all over me
as we ran
down Neckargasse,
exulting
in the sky weeping all over us
and in the laughter of children
splashing in the damp raging day.
It was the month of the asparagus
when our dreams landed
through the attic window of Lange Gasse 18.
It was the day my heart rang
with all the bells of Tübingen
and my bones ached
with the weight of memory,
the sad loss,
hanging over us
a mountainous cloud of longing,
full with the tangy moisture
of new songs and poems.
It was the month of the asparagus
when I zoomed in to meet you
with my arms open to the grand afternoon.
O what a day
when I came again to see you
with my heart heavy,
riddled with the seeds
of creative delight and the light
of a stream of wondrous moments
pouring,
the length of Wilhelmstrasse,
into the very realms of hope.
THE YOUTH OF THE POET OF YOUTH - Die Jugend des Dichters der Jugend
(Hermann Hesse in Tübingen, 1895-1899)
The sunflower opens as does my heart,
Longing,
Expanding
In love and hope.
Spring, what is your intent?
When will my thirst be quenched? ...
(Eduard Mörike)
Today a prayer
in my nervous heart,
starting the tasks of the day
at 7am
with the edge of a warm coffee
on my silent tongue.
Through the window,
people’s bodies stir
leaves
and beating birds
swim in the fresh daylight.
‘My growing wings should carry the songs’
on my way to work
in the beautiful city,
smitten with melancholy,
no spring in my shoes,
back to the yawning books,
back to the cellar of Hades.
7.30,
another stretch of a morning,
Carl August Sonnewald
and his Swabian breathing,
Henirich Hermes
and that cough thick with the phlegm
of heavy tomes;
the ethic of work
rampant,
all-consuming,
eating away at joy,
sucking the melody
from the throats of songsters.
O painful youth
where will it all end?
Where in this cosmos
is the love?:
‘My gods are better and more faithful
than that Sunday God.’
I scramble up the hill
for lunch
taking the air within Castle walls,
Father Goethe keeping me company,
clinging to the beauty
of butterflies
in the gardens,
something to hang onto
to get through the afternoon with
at the enduring bench,
overfowing with commerce
and the daily grind of monotonous money.
Sometimes
a swim in the Neckar
is the only way to cool off
and midnight walks on sleepless nights.
Writing means singing,
poetry is song.
Chopin
ripples in the trees
along Herrenberger Strasse,
dances in Lauscher the Listener’s
lonely little room.
A sip of Frau Leopold’s bitter cider
makes me drowsy,
ready to cave in,
looking for love
in the strings
of a violin.
Student suicides,
funereal music
waft by,
a fraternity carousing
in the dirty street.
Half the night,
I lie at the window
reading Mörike
and Novalis,
surrounded by books
all the time;
and that bastard Herr Christaller upstairs
whistling at night,
bumping about
in his boots.
Swabian stories
at the Swabian Clerks’ Club,
startling misadventures
and fairy tales
keeping me awake in bed,
unused kisses on my bachelor pillow,
moths of poems
taunting me
down centuries.
And Otto and Ludwig and Carlo, Oskar and Wilhelm,
‘Le Petit Cenacle’,
surrounding me at another Last Supper,
sinking in the beer-soaked words
of this pissing city.
Life is so lonely for us all in the end
with only the glint of a smile on the face of Helene
or the hint of a tune in a line
to redeem it:
the smile on a mother’s glad face,
the grace of a feather in sunlight.
I am looking for a lake
to rest my Romantic Songs by;
I am looking for a cab
out of town,
a way of leaving Tübingen
without ever leaving it.
Step out of my way,
a writer is coming.
Let me reach for the sky
with the fountain pen
of a spirited man,
grown beautiful
from the twitching bones
of shy youth.
One day the stars above
Shall flow in golden wine,
We will enjoy it all,
And as stars we will shine.
(Novalis)
HERMANN HESSE IN THE GUTTER
‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ (Oscar Wilde).
Headlong, headstrong
Hermann Hesse
fell, flat on his face, in the Tübingen mud.
“That’s it! Get stuck into the shit!”,
an ageing Swabian yelled.
And the church bells throbbed along Lange Gasse,
and the dust fell on Heckenhauer’s Bookshop.
And, as young Hermann slithered to his fumbling feet
and cleaned his shitty glasses,
his first poems
shone in the moonlit gutter.
Note: The writer Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was born in Calw and, at the age of 19, began a four year period of work in Heckenhauer’s bookshop in Tübingen. It was then that he began writing and, during this time, he published his first poems as ‘Romantic Songs’.
FALLING IN LOVE IN THE CAFE PICCOLO
I am crouched over my sparkling glass
waiting for the sunshine to come through
to join me on a winter’s day in Tübingen,
for a leaf to fly through the door
and show me its intricate patterns
in my penetrating stare,
to skip and dance
and float away
like me
in a trance
in a delicate romance,
a rush of poems,
a sudden surge of booklets
in my travelling bag,
a dream packed into a KLM briefcase;
the tightness of a blue skirt,
the glance of a flashing winged eye
heading towards me,
threatening to make love to me,
to blow away this dark news
pushing its way into my anxious face
from a complete stranger’s daily paper.
And Jürgen is rocking tonight in a corner,
sharing his energy with the moon
and I have the smell of a coffee on my sleeve,
the evil taste of last night’s schnapps
on this stooped boy’s lips,
the hysterical melancholy that only Tübingen brings me;
along the cobbled path outside the Piccolo window
prances chance
and that girl I’ll never ever know
teasing the slipping tears into my scribbles,
her picture forever in my twitching English heart
saying:
‘Ciao!
I’m never really going to leave this town.’
A delicate grip
on reality.
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN
On the other side of town,
through the curtains of Haaggasse,
you can hear the blackbirds weeping in the night,
the screaming of a desolate widow
and the drains of history
gurgling with the blood of spilt dreams.
On the other side of town,
on the back walls of Bismarckstrasse,
you can see that tragedy lies waiting for you
in the deaths of moths and butterflies
and the dripping wings of oil-soaked dreamers,
crushed on the streets to drown out the singing in the trees.
On the other end of town,
on the moonlit paving stones of Gartenstrasse,
in the saddened lines of a refugee's poetry,
you can hear the crackle of a synagogue burning,
the crushing boots of a blinding ignorance
and the wretched tolling of bells repeating themselves.
On the other side of town,
in a lonely pension room,
there's a worn-out man who dresses himself
and his memories stick to the tips of his bootlaces
as he trails down the stairs
to stumble into another lost day.
On the other side of town,
in the Holzmarkt gutters where Hesse made poems,
more soldiers march to rape a young beauty,
kill the joy in a choirgirl's throat
and bring to an end the chance of a good God
or a heaven for beggars to dwell in.
On the other side of town,
in the shadows that only Payerstrasse knows,
you will find me and my solitary pen scraping away
to throw rhymes down my neck
and sink into the insane night,
with a town's clocks' hands trembling in the dark rain.
TÜBINGEN AGAIN
I come back to you
when I am feeling hopeless,
when I am in despair of the heartless.
I trail my hefty books through Customs
to reach you,
to plunge into your depths,
to swim in the mystery of your streets,
the beauty of your trees,
the melancholy of your seminar rooms.
Yes, Tübingen,
it’s me
looking for myself once more
in your troubled mirror.
So I dive
into Weinhaus Beck
and back and back and back
into the Boulanger.
So I stagger
out of love
into the arms
of the Neckarmüller to feed the ducks
with scraps of my trembling poetry.
Your Hölderlin Tower
always makes me feel sad.
My body droops like a weeping willow
as my mad muse floats up river
to liberate new dreams,
to greet fresh friends.
I sail in your skies
in a Lufthansa trance.
Let me sing
of all that’s good in Swabia
for you.
Let me wish your lovely children joy
and then let me break my heart again
when I have to leave you.
FOREVER (WELL, IT’S ANOTHER DAY!)
(for Carolyn & Christoph)
Forever
flooded in my heart,
I am bloodlogged
with the flow of you.
Tübingen,
you gush
with hard-earned smiles
for me;
you are the sum
of all those leaves
I’ve scraped together
to find a little happiness
in this gorgeous day.
It’s the chance meeting
of a fragile poet
and a fleeting Swabian muse;
it’s a beautiful cat
chasing a singing bird;
a flight of fancy,
a dash of hot wine
with warm friends,
whose tasteful photographs
and gleaming laughter
I will treasure
in my sparkling veins
forever.
