THE GREYING OF ALEX

Fog, as if Christo had hung a winding-sheet.

Facades grave enough for Stasi reunions,

some puckering, pocked, untucked,

all barely ribbed, jerry-built by Dr Mabuse:

thousands upon thousands of square eyes,

sockets filleted, ostere, post-nuclear.

Fernsehturm etherised has lost its toothpick:

Big Bertha’s barrel detumescing in smoke

amidst skeletons of scaffolding, sculptures of rust.

Plonked there, grim as a small-time undertaker,

with Engels, a little stiff, standing in as pallbearer,

Karl Marx, bronze lustre gangrened to granite,

limbs tubed like Oliver Hardy, feet fat and flat,

stares out into the dead space of the Forum, as if

grieving for the Allee Katz stoned at Café Moscau.

                                                          Michael Small

Berlin, Sep 12-Oct 16, 2005