Syndic Narrations
Art of the Spoken Word
German Poet, Britta Kollberg, writes to Syndic Literary Journal:
Hi LeRoy,
LeRoy Chatfield writes to Poet Britta Kollberg:
My Dear Britta,
I lose track of time but it seems ages since you last sent me a piece to publish in Syndic.
It is so refreshing to hear from you again and to know that you are well and even now basking in the Baltic Sea. Sounds wonderful! You deserve it!
I am very impressed with your memoir piece “Wall windows, East Berlin”. I congratulate you on the the power of your narration; I really felt the bravery and the danger of those who sought to escape by scaling the Berlin Wall.
Take Care,
LeRoy
Wall windows, East Berlin
Written and Narrated by Britta R. Kollberg
Published by LeRoy Chatfield
Germany
Wall windows, East Berlin
Britta R. Kollberg
I
There was barbed wire on top of the wall
pointing inside.
You had to climb the concrete slabs (if you got there, crouching across a dead end
in a deserted neighborhood or silently swimming across the night river),
you had to climb the concrete slabs and swing
or drag yourself over barbs, carefully pulling them out of your pants
and armpits before you jumped down to cross
the no man’s land now: landmines sleeping beneath you, and fingers
following you on the trigger as you run across,
waiting to stop you well before
you reach the second wall and, climbing up the concrete, feel the spotlight moving over
your insected back.
Some made it.
II
The day the Berlin wall came down, broke open, was unlocked mistakenly
by someone on TV
that evening I sat in what had been my room throughout my teenage years.
I didn’t watch TV.
But someone did. My mother did, she came into my room and, unbelieving,
asked if we should go and see the thing.
It was late night.
It was when people watched TV,
and fell asleep there, on the couch,
and hours later, eyes half closed, shuffled their movie dreams to bed.
But someone was awake,
and someone stammered on a TV channel hardly watched
the nervous news
and hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands
switched off their TVs and went
to see the thing.
I didn’t go. I didn’t join my mother for the one hour car ride through the night city
to a southern opening near Moritzplatz where she saw people serving champagne
to the border guards. I stayed home, reading, writing, tired,
planning our church youth group retreat the coming weekend,
drafting exercises, texts, discussions on beliefs and future plans (and not about
the question who might be the person in our midst who spied on us—we had decided
not to try to find out, not to spy-spy on each other…)
And I remember Saturday that weekend, how I suddenly, so urgently suggested going there
to see the open wall, days after it broke down, was unlocked by mistake—
and how I was postponed (due to our program)
with the assurance—and it turned out true—that there would still be time,
the wall would not close down again, so there’d be endless time
to see the thing…
III
I went in December
when I had guests, tourists from faraway.
I saw the squares and shop-windows, known from TV. I took a tour along historical
street lamps in the West. I don’t know if my mother
ever went to sit in the movie theaters and the pubs of her youth in Frohnau
or to the station where she had caught that city train one night
after the movies, the last train back East
(it was late night)
the last train to the East
before, as they heard the next morning,
a wall was erected and closed over night.
IV
The wall is down in pieces, bits of stones
in glass-front cabinets around the world.
I never went to scratch one off although
the wall was just next door. (It is, still.
Graffiti along it color my Shabbat walks
now.) I never bought a piece or cracked
one out of broken slabs nor did I take
the one a friend once brought me as a gift.
But I have little barbs
still sticking in the hollows of my knees.
That will suffice.