Prussian Nights

Prussian nights, as these are.

Tonight we’re close, and yet we’re far,

                                           -Away to see each other’s sardonic face.

Departing aircrafts flitting through the sky,

-Confide their bereavement in me, and with a sigh,

-They tell tales of us being alone in both time and space.

Tonight the battle’s lost and yet the war is won.

Cast away from the din and tumult of the road,

-Stands a solitary bill-board.

At it I stand looking, and fish into my pockets for academic comprehension.

The carnival is closed, to the people; its rides are not open.

Now all that’s awake at this hour is the tip of my pen.

The philosopher’s statue stands alone; forgotten in the mist.

-And philosophises to an audience which does not exist.

A surreal stillness has fallen over our dearly beloved earth.

-Dampening all our inordinate lust driven actions.

-Crying hysterically in favor of the fall of Sodom.

Tonight we’re devoid of all signs of hypocrisy and all means of mirth.

A freight truck passed me by,

-And before dissolving into the line of the last few halogen lamp-posts,

-It advised me to hide from the societal eyes.

So I make my walk tonight, without a beginning and without an end,

Political posters on the walls do portend,

-Of avertable coups and unneeded revolutions.

A surreal night has fallen over our toxic city.

Stifling all our crowning consummations of living someone else’s life,

-Of earning our own enmity.

-Of enticing our sober neighbor’s wife.

The smell of kerosene and leather float merrily through the air.

Weary bus drivers ply their fares,

-Between the ascent and the descent.

As if after making something so sure,

-Someone tonight has been rendered insecure.

Yet on your window pane you stand.

-Images and words from last night’s intercourse in hand.

-Eternally waiting for him, in death and in life.

-Yet knowing all the while, that he can’t possibly arrive.

A shriveled old man of minimal appearance was here,

-Before he added to the desertedness of the road.

-Before he was ripped by the economical sword.

He had cast a fleeting glance at me, and then had walked on eternally

There was no speculation in those eyes, no beating in that heart.

He did not choose, but was chosen to transmit this nocturnal hydrant smell.

Yet he mocked at me for having planned my life all too well.

The cynosure of all things urbanized, now sleeps like dead.

-To it can be attributed all our nocturnal societal intercourses.

                               Empty people now lie lapped in their empty dreams.

Unuttered words and unstated feelings,

-Now chiefly gloat over the fact that we never did let them escape.

Hinterland’s grotesque night descends down upon us resplendently.

We are not happy, yet we all must pretend to be,

-At this hour, aren’t we all led in to nocturnal depression?

-By any and every bloke?

Haven’t we all been led in to believing,

-That our own life is but an ugly farcical joke.