Liberties

The cold glint of gold in the winter sun. The monuments no longer blaze like back in the day, the barrels of anti-aircraft guns, clumsy tanks. The old capital of terror turns over in its sleep, shifts from one side to the other: East-West. A great listening ear hovers in the air above the Tiergarten trees, a funnel filled with the echoes of victory and love parades. And no one on the axis, the vanishing point where war and post-war disappeared, eerie, the spine of the city, broken over again. How small one feels here, and especially after so many decades living in this place, where the dead read the living the riot act. Where perspective is all, and memories become anniversaries. Where houses in the distance hum and high above the oily waters the overhead railway rushes on by. translated by Karen Leeder