Weekend in Berlin

We couldn’t take in the topography
of the city, though the scars were clear.
Too good at public transport and
getting around the city’s sprawl.
Too keen to use a travel card from here
to there and back, to the Art Hotel,
its pleasing prints and breakfast buffet.

So, when we left, we weren’t too sure
what lay next to what or how to walk from here.
But we’d seen the site of Checkpoint
Charlie, recognised from films,
the place that housed the Stasi,
and the museum recording centuries
of Jewish life, before that time,
An island of museums…would you believe?
One full of ersatz household goods
and Trabant cars: remember them?
Remember the exodus from East to West?

And the remnants of a wall, so huge,
so terrifying, so forbidding and so sad
to see; and the paintings on the sections
still standing, looking sad,
but we forgot to find the Kit Kat Club,
or dance to the music of Kurt Weill
in some seedy theatre or dance hall.
Never really learned the music of the place.