Das Wiedersehen
Don't go, they urged,
You should never go back,
Time's too short.
But I've got to be in Wimbledon by 7.00 p.m.,
How much time will I need?
At that time of night .... two hours.
So long.
I got there,
Pulled up beside the jolly balloons,
(Und nur mit kurzer Verspätung - 19.02)
Stepped out and into
The cold dampness of an oh-so-English back garden
Of our half way house,
Fell softly into the circle of a
Warm, communal German smile.
They remembered, I recognised .....
"Der Herr Manfred von Küneweg!"
Und dann, so weiter ....
On cue, some absent magician
Turned down the sky,
Struck up the fairy lights,
Put time on hold, and conjured,
In slow procession,
Out of the Dämmerung,
Images of Ireland, the past, another country.
A voice gone thirty years,
The faces full of life done,
But still the unchanged essence
Of what we were, we thought.
No longer 46
Held, in no man's time,
We edged towards the past.
Minute events, forgotten promises,
The words we'd used,
Helped us construct an edifice,
Mosaic-like,
Glinting in the August dark,
Of what was common, to be shared,
Of what we knew had been.
Circling, round and round,
Snatching and giving,
Corroborating, explaining
What we'd really meant.
Engulfed in some happy gentleness,
Open and guileless,
We led a roundel of a dance,
Out of time.
We trapped the moment.
The clock stood still
At ten to midnight.
I've got to go -
Enjoy what still remains,
Macht's gut, wenn nicht zu oft,
Amuse yourselves well.
The journey back home
To Cambridge
Took forever.
I had a lot of catching up to do
For lost time.
Iain Mitchell, 31st August, 1996
MCB - Kirchain 1966 - 1996
Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding ........
Manchmal steh' ich auf mitten in der Nacht
und lass die Uhren alle, alle stehn.
Der Rosenkavalier - Hofmannsthal / Strauß
| 1996 Reunion |
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