Across the Wall

Roy Lichtenstein

Across the Wall

It's the Wall
That says it all
Grey, dark, wired, shut off-

And we behind blocked off windows
Like the denizens of a cursed castle.

We wondered how the Sun
Stopped shining on our side-

We wanted
For a place in the sun
And being unblocked.

Plate glass shatters well
Into harmless pebbles
We know
They make it like that
No shards-

But in East Germany
They only had the old kind
That you can't see
Before it cuts through your jugular.

Getting across that Wall of fear
You had to be sheared off
Like a butcher's abortion-

Because if you did-
You had to be torn out of a nurturing womb
That you knew well in the gloaming
And flung out like bleeding offal
To pollute the sunny side.

What could they possibly see
In a penniless refugee
Except unwanted trouble?

Know that it is very bad to be less
Even less
Least-
But with so many promises for pillows.

But we did have for plot
One stained truth
To repeat after ourselves-

If you fly, I fly with you
If you grow, I grow too.

It meant nothing
If you stayed on our side of the Wall
But it gave us hope
And made us smile.

We had heard
Across the Wall
The sunlight was strong

Besides it always glowed
From our side-

Maybe we could
Will
Energy
To harness

We thought-

And gallop to our purpose
Straight through that Wall
Like antimattering miracles!

Maybe we could bound over hedges
That only posed
As Walls
And what can Stasi watchtowers
Do to celestials?

On that grey side
We knew all about how to
Stop dead
And turn immortal.
So how could they catch a running immortal?

But like a guilty secret
We grew that Wall together
Erich and all us friends
To protect ourselves-
We grew it
Brick by brick
To shut ourselves in.

And then it came down
Like Honecker's pants
And we were just as free
As Charlie and Coca Cola.

And now we're out here
And Out Here is part of There!

We eat sausages, drink beer,
Drive BMWs with spin

We pay with plastic and Euromoney
Being rich is no sin

We spend time, make music
Walk now and then on stilts-
And look across that phantom Wall
Without the slightest bit of guilt.


9th November 2009
20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down.

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright, Gautam Mukherjee 2009