Other Side of the Wall


A day earlier
smoky, yellowed haze hung;
grit suspended in heavy, choking air—
surreal, sepia-toned industrial city
peopled by stained, pale faces;
gaunt, empty with grim, hollow eyes.

Overnight storms, winds grasping,
washed sooty shadows down ancient sewers;
leaving crystal clarity, sharpened focus
transforming coal smudged etchings
to pantone images.

Morning ramble, lost, but unconcerned
in the losing, I stumbled across
what I’d conscientiously avoided-
had no desire to see: knowing, believing
reality would undermine, perhaps negate, inner vision.
Dead-ended, damp, newspaper strewn alley
grounded with crimson imbued cobbled stone,
bordered with crumbling brick hard in need
of mason’s tuck point. Crooked line of buildings
marched: hunched-over stone historians.

Split picture image of brilliant, impossibly blue sky-
blackened rock defaced further with German graffiti.
Crowned with shards of multi-colored glass glittering falsely,
reflecting sunlight, shooting prismatic rainbows
on shuttered, sealed windows, ghoulish eyes to nowhere.
Tangle of rusted wire snaked across the height,
venomous, insidious: the serpent danced with
swords of discontent. My fingers splayed over this
divider of mankind, imprinting Braille impressions of
echoed, grainy filmed broadcasts. A small piece of stone
moved under my hand. Alley deserted, I pried it lose.
A shot bulleted out of the silence. Dropping the stone
I tried to melt into rock. A sound pulled eyes upward:
Wild eyes in ash-white face met mine with searing desperation.
Pitiful bag dropped a heartbeat before more shots exploded.
A moment of pathetic quiet shattered by unmistakable sound
of a body hitting the ground
on the other side of the wall.

Photograph of wild-eyed child spilled from the duffle.
Soldiers materialized on the street. Grabbed viciously by a
gutteral, gravel-voiced German, I was dragged beyond
a battered iron door. Searched, my passport disappeared
into dingy hallway. Strident voice, raised pitch intensifying
to fingernail on chalkboard intensity, but I knew no German
and I did not understand. Time lost meaning.
Overwhelming the barking and snapping of
Rotweilerian soldiers, vision of wild, bleak eyes blinked.
Clearly uninvolved, although now permanently so,
passport in hand, I am shoved out the door.
Deserted, dead air hanging, I grabbed my dropped stone
and ran out of the alley, never looking back.

I remembered Mr. Gorbechov tearing,
tearing down that wall
when another one was finished.
Smooth, black marble lined with memories,
photographs of a mother’s child.
Looking up at name after name
I see clouds and impossibly blue sky reflected.
Then, a child’s face-
wide, startled eyes looking down at mine
from atop his grandfather’s shoulders.
Running splayed fingers,
imprinting etched names into memory.
Seeing their reflections there,
I see refractions of other faces
trapped forever
on the other side of the wall.