Berlin

Here is a poem I wrote on a train leaving Berlin on July 31, 2022:

O Berlin, how can I leave you?

O Air infused with the sighs of history recent and rich,

how can I fill my lungs with you

and exhale you,

abandoning you for emptier air?

O Streets burdened with the memory of the footsteps of those whose hearts

broke with hate, with fear, with sorrow, or with joy,

how can I leave you with only the memory of my own small feet;

the feet of one foreign in nationality but united in the Heartbreak of humanity?

O Berlin, how can I leave you?

O City East and West,

severed and split and prevented from locking fingers,

how can I now sever myself from you,

preventing my hands from linking myself to you,

Except with the knowledge that walls can be torn down,

fingers can relock

hearts can be mended,

feet can trod a second time on forgotten ground,

and lungs can once again breathe abandoned air?

O Berlin, how can I leave you?

Berlin Sketches - (from left to right: die Siegessäule; Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas; Berliner Fernsehturm), Theresa DiFranco