Farewell to Hamburg

by Terry McDonagh

I might as well begin by saying
life has been good to me in
almost four decades of living
in Hamburg — now we’re leaving,

I’d found it hard to knock on doors
back then. It was all new and
I didn’t have the right words
nor did I have the laws of the sun
to put my kind of smile on faces
as I stood there with little to say.

The doors often closed and I’d
turn back into my fog
to go on searching for rich berries
at pedestrian crossings where
people stood in silent clusters
waiting for lights to guide them.

I’d peer into colourless dictionaries
and found that sounds like broetchen
got me bread–rolls on request.
In dreams I loitered round
strange ways of saying I will,
I won’t or how do you say that.
Back then, I’d needed a dream
and landed on an extravaganza
of street life and colourful boats
on a bulging river. And there were
dogs, unruffled people and a home
for Johannes Brahms and The Beatles.

For a time I lived close to dusk
and twilight, chewing furiously
on tiny grains of sweetness.
I sidled through day times and
night times aching for the sighs
I’d left behind. It was all too clean
and silent but it must have been
that silence that got me wanting
to begin again — to plant a spring
that stayed on into seasons — to
listen to the songs of the great Elbe.

And believe me, there were voices
telling me: you are turning your back
on your past. You have no right
to enjoy yourself, but Mondays
wove into Fridays in Hamburg.
Saturdays wove into Sundays
in Hamburg and I walked about
as free of guilt as a summer wisp
taking in everything I could while
remembering Irish sun and stars
trying to strobe through clouds
and men with big sticks lashing
at every form of light that might
have guided me to a safer place.

That new day has become decades.
If you stay on the road too long
you miss the turn, I’m told and
homeward bound and home are
only divided by dreary geography.

After all, I have put in full and
golden years, spoken my lines
without prompt and had my say
so it’s back to my place of birth
to the birthplace of the bard Raifteirí
to hopes swimming like water
to cows and sheep that stare you
in the face without blinking.

Joanna, Matthew and I close one door
to open another. Sean, Brit and Emma
remain in my outstretched arms.
Without plans nothing is terrifying.
Even in white smoke, knowledge
takes its time to work on the heart.
Another silence waits. We’re leaving.