Competition

Highly Commended

East Berlin, 1979
by Chris Hamerton

Ihre Fahrscheine, bitte! (1) The voice is official.
My fellow travellers rummage obediently,
I search my pockets also.
Ticket, visa, passport; my crime
Of being foreign, ein Auslander, (2)
Is about to be revealed, and not only that,
But that I am AUStralian, about as aus as you can get in this
Very un-aus land.

The train rumbles on; sways, as trains do,
But discreetly,
So as not to upset the Ordnung, (3)
Not at all in the way
Of foreign trains,
Whose wild and irregular motions
Positively incite their occupants to think
Dangerous thoughts of sedition and individuality.

Now it slows, sways some more,
Moves off to a sidetrack,
Then stops. But why?
Nothing happens.
No one gets off. Or on; and indeed,
There is no platform here;
A bare and wintry wood
Is all there is to see.

But I hear something.
A rumbling, slight,
A shaking, just
Perceptible, but getting stronger.
Another train is hurrying; dark, busy, dramatic,
Towards us to pass... a steam train!
The unfamiliar sight fascinates me, and I peer closer.
The buffers are red, the engine black,
White steam pumps from the boiler, it is
Everything a steam train should be, but then I see
REICHSBAHN! (4)

This is an original. This the engine that once carried
Young Germans away to war, and returned
With Poles and Russians for slavery,
Or Auschwitz , or Dachau ... and Death.
I feel chilled, sickened, betrayed
By my naive Australian excitement.
The engine stamps on, fills my window,
Bustles monstrously past.
Then, as carriages clatter after it, I see
a garish, lurid snake of writhing figures,
Distorted forms,
Smiling faces,
Tangled writings,
Twisted fonts,
Intimations of love, lust and life;
GRAFFITI!

A nearly overwhelming wave of hope.

(1) Your tickets please!
(2) A foreigner (out-lander)
(3) Order
(4) (Third) Reich Railway