Jim Burns
midnight in the vienna of the mind
The roofs of Vienna are wet again tonight,
and the old apartments leak scratchy sounds
of half-forgotten sad songs. Above me,
an ageing veteran of the Spanish Civil War
coughs out his life in an alcoholic haze.
If you go to the corner of Beckumerstrasse,
and say the right words, you'll either meet
a foreign agent, or a high-heeled prostitute,
and either can initiate you into secret moves
and mysterious positions. A black car hurtles
through the deserted alleys, someone struggles
in the back seat. The policeman looking
the other way will not live to see morning,
the car will leave the city and head towards
an unknown destination. The gramophone
grinds down, the fire flickers fitfully.
Outside the window a soft whistle signals
"The International". I don't know what to say,
but the ghosts have ways of making me talk.
Page(s) 37
magazine list
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- Lamport Court
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The