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Philip Wilson

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Ostalgie

Last week in England I was printing off
Coleridge with a cartridge giving up the ghost.
Two lines of black turned to three lines of red,
ended in five lines of gold, the most

beautiful colour in the world, I think.
I’d been handed a rainbow from Germany
to block out the Coleridge from my mind
and start me thinking how I could be free

and happy on the streets of Berlin
if only I weren’t here inside a room
with a dead printer. I remembered the day
when we lunched at the Tacheles from noon

till six, beer turning into beer, then off
to sit incontinently at the Distl cabaret
where I missed most of the jokes
but enjoyed it all anyway.

Afterwards I looked at you searching
in your bag for money for the 100 bus
to take us back to the crumbling
tenement in old East Berlin that sheltered us

for those two precious weeks when we weren’t apart.
It fell into place as you found the fare:
the black of your boots, the red of your dress,
the glorious gold of your hair.

 

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