Poetry Originals
Colin Dardis, the editor of Lagan Online asked me to submit a poem. It was very hard to choose. Eventually, he chose Berlin from a group of four poems. This poem had a very long gestational time, but the final version appeared after I had spent a day in Berlin sightseeing on my own in 2013. We had been shooting an art documentary there with the Melchiorsgrund Theatre Company playing Die Gute Zeit by Ernst Barlach. I had a whole day on my hand after the shoot and the city impressed me with its vibrant culture and history.
I had lived on both sides of the wall in certain periods of my life, spending my young years in Hungary, behind the Iron Curtain, then many years in Western Germany. Of course, the Fall of the Wall is engraved in my memory and I felt proud of my Hungarian countrymen when I realised what an influential role Hungary played in uniting East and West Germany. The poem is merely a reflection of my impressions on that August day in Berlin and the day the Wall was demolished.
