The Wall

The Wall
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That was when Donald duck Trabis met
Uncle Scrooge Mercedes Benz
In rivers of head lights
Winding through hills and valleys
Strangers dancing in circles
Street musicians on violins, accordions without names,
On Potzdammer Platz
That cold, predawn 11/9, in eighty nine frame.

And, Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall……………

I clinked glasses at Ku’damm
Smoking over coffee, beer and cheap champagne
With five million other voices
Heard only in dreams
On the streets of Berlin.
When the French spoke German
And the Germans French.
No jackboots, no rifles, no mud sloshed trench,
In joy and delirium
stretching out to iridium skies
For the hand of God that gave.
No Stasi, police looking on, unglazed
No bullets in their guns, no fires ablaze.

And Humpty Dumpty had a great fall……………

The Wall, people pouring
People astride, people out of control, none in disguise
Chaotic joy as East met West
And bliss was in that dawn, alive or stone cold dead.
Music drifting in from a balcony, Beethoven’s ninth
Alle Menschen werden bruder
Yes brother, O brother of mine
Crescendo in cheers, pickaxes raised,
As the first drill broke in
And the wall was erased,
Down, down, down and down
Take this, and that and this again
You twerps, imbeciles
You miserable cold war myopic clowns.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men………………

People cheering, people crazed
People drunk and people dazed
No government in East or West,
Checkpoint Charlie unmanned, deserted alleyways
Slowly drifting into the hangover days
Of surreptitious suspicion
And longing for bygone pathways
Of Trabi exhaust fumes
Neo Nazi chain gangs
On Alexander Platz trains,
Lashing and smashing in the acid rain

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

As the butterfly fluttered
At far corners of the world
dominoes rolled and other walls fell
through the rainforests, behind the curtain
ripping through the Himalayas
breaking through the shackles of a bygone world
Minds opened minds merged
And the river ran another course
Yes, it began in Berlin
Or, did it?