Wanderer's Nightsong

Yes the nearest Bachstadt is Arnstadt, where JS Bach held his first appointment before moving onto Erfurt (the region´s capital) and then Leipzig, which is in Sachsen Anhalt (einen kleinen Paris as Goethe says in Faust I). He was born in Eisenach which is in the west of Thüringen. I haven´t been there. There´s a great statue of Bach in Arnstadt, the nearest small town to Ilmenau. I cycled there one Sunday, got lost on the lanes dappled with sunlight and the scent of pine. There were many Hell´s Angels on the roads, one big guy wearing a Wehrmacht style German helmet, which looks like a knob, and a pair of glasses with throat cover, which made him look like Darth Vader. They moved on fairly quickly after pointing at my alu bike and laughing at it. I got a hopper ticket and went down south after having lunch in Arnstadt (a great lunch of Thüringen Spargel - asparagus - soup, bockwurst mit sauerkraut und brötchen and a great ice cream all washed down with a great glass of Köstritzer, the local brew. I cycled for about 30 km into Suhl, a town totally nondescrit, housing mostly old people (I think it is Thüringen´s old people´s home.). Then I got back on the train, thankfully my alu bike was mostly still in one piece, although I almost came a cropper on several occasions, and went back to Plaue, an orifice of nothingness between Ilmenau and Arnstadt.

So I didn´t find out very much about JS Bach, except to say that Arnstadt looks like the nest of a great genius. I don´t know but Thüringen must have been amazing in Bach´s day, its certainly an amazing Länder today, although is is a but too ruhig. Schiller was Professor of History in Jena, I´ve been through Jena on several occasions now. It has a big university with an active, radical student fringe. Erfurt looks like a painting, there´s the Krämer Brücke, the only example of a Medieval bridge in northern europe that has shops on it, like the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in Firenze. There´s a statue of Martin Luther, who preached in the town, and also was kidnapped/imprisoned/in hiding in the Wartburg where he assumed the identity Junker Jörg (the local aristrocrats realised that Luther was going to change Europe, but they needed a way of placing him within their narrative, so they awarded him this imaginary appelation, Lord George. ML wore a strange beard in the Wartburg and was generally pretty mad most of the time, a really crazy, whacky character, the Michael Jackson of his day).

Another fascinating paragraph. No, I didn’t know about another generation of Argentine exiles. Where did you glean all this from? And, of course, just happens you’re in Germany again, as you are. I knew nothing about Thüringen and uranium. I used to associate it with Bach.


In gainful directive employment so must be swift about answering –

Cheers,
Simon


Hi, I had to take the bike down to the repair shop. Its a hot day here, about 30 degrees. The repair shop is just out of the town centre, near an area called Ober Pörlitz. The town itself consists of old apartment blocks from the GDR era and older buildings which are beautiful and clearly originated in the 19th century. The apartment blocks are very ugly indeed, but there would certainly be some of them even if the GDR had never happened. Ilmenau was a spa town going back to the 18th century. The town is proud to be a Goethestadt, the poet visited the town frequently towards the end of his life, since he was taxman for the entire region. He lived in Weimar beside F von Schiller but holidayed in Ilmenau writing his famous poem Wandlers Nachtlied (Wanderer´s Night Song) on the tallest mountain called the Kickelhahn (cockerel). Goethe also supervised mining in the region, for the geology of Thüringen is very rich and complex. For instance, 50,000 people were employed in the uranium industry, but all lost their jobs when the GDR collapsed (do you know Hönecker is still alive, living in Argentina?). Thüringen satisfied the uranium needs for the whole of the GDR and Thüringen is one of the best preserved, cleanest, wealthiest parts of the old GDR along with Sachsen whose capital is Dresden. There´s also an extensive glass industry, the thermometer was invented here and a Technical University. I am staying in the Christlichesjugenddorf on campus. Apparantly the inventor of the MP3 lectures at the TU.
 
Wanderer's Nightsong II

The hut where Goethe wrote the poem

Up there all summits
are still.
In all the tree-tops
you will
feel but the dew.
The birds in the forest stopped talking.
Soon, done with walking,
you shall rest, too.

Ein Gleiches (German)

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

POEMS WRITTEN IN ILMENAU; THÜRINGEN

THÜRINGER WALD

The valley is a million year old
 Formula: meaning, what is a poem? 
The last chance creation is this. 
An upheaval, a certain process. 

The ending of a substratum 
Replete with faults, depressions. 
Perhaps it is the oil of the future? 
A sequence of beeps and silences.

The seismographic landscape 
Is suffering all of us who live there. 
Geological time and its sunbeams 
Are travelling in myriad ways. 

Everywhere industrial processes 
Are forming combinations. 
Brown figures are stooping down 
In the dusk resemble 

Van Gogh´s Potato eaters. 
Vast cycles Of nature are re-enacted 
What is flowing through the littered 
Valley voices in or out of the Spring rain? 

SNAIL


Nature´s stain is also the snail

With its broad back. All his luggage

Is included in this crystal sculpture.


I prod at him. For a moment

He retracts his head.

I pass on, then look back for a minute.


He is still there

The great north sun is beaming. His shell is chill pink.

The great north chill sun declines into the pink clouds.

Wispy as horses tails

Strung across the snail´s entrails.



THÜRINGER WALD 

The hill is over the hill.

The sun is over the horizon.

The landscape´s stillness

Is a well-sculpted end vision.


There are no farmer´s left

But still there is produce.

There are no bank´s left

But still there is commerce.


Even if Hell is retracted

The rest is still coming on.

Even is annihilation is imminent

There will still be a discount.


In Manebach the choir

Sings the songs once

Composed in Erfurt

By a hell-faced child


In Arnstadt. The dappled

Organ music is played

In the Bachkircke:

Sunlight in the square.


Paul Murphy

POEMS OF HENRY HOPWOOD-PHILLIPS

Tommy

Little Tommy died today
Six years and five months old:
No one ever saw again
The stars in his eyes
The cobweb of his orbs
Had caught

He'd killed a baby you see
That hadn't stopped screaming
Rolling about on the bed
A little angel
Nay, a devil;
Somewhat inhuman.

Tommy smothered it
Until it stopped
And it lay, a polite lump,
He had let out a tear,
And left the silence
With a little sigh

The police did come for Tommy
But Tommy wasn't there
Tommy was in heaven
Existence a memory.


SPRING

The lips of the daffodils' buds are pursed
Their faces washed in the morning dew
Anticipating the coming lark song
Scattered by the feet of ancient yew

Salvation's ghost fills the air
As the Gospel rides the bells' peals
Releasing Love and Hope from fetters cast
When Adam had Man's fate sealed.

A turbulent palate of grey and blue
rages and splashes o'er head
Whilst Boreas whistles his mischief
Over the warbling voices of the Lethe.

Man, laid down in earth's mossy bosom
absorbs his being in stony silence
An ecstatic quiet, a mute felicity,
As it was in the Beginning.


Ex Animo

People lost and never met,
Though they swim with
Nay, haunt me,
To neither do I belong,
But with the old crones of stony hearts
That loved too much, too well,
They that so bitter in retreat,
Let wounds swallow them whole,
Those who sat in flinted silence
As all their frisky charms spilt out
And breathed in a story to replace the woman.


Aponoia

Large eyes filled her face
Damaged but defiant
Tainted with an innocence
That never spoke
But screamed or whispered

A kiss meant more
Than a fuck
A sure sign of rigor mortis
Rivers flowed in and out:
Never with

Thin lips
Bitten but still nubile
Had gone through so many
Like an animal lashing out
Bleeding life

Built up
And let down
Photography: reality’s idealism
Was her religion
Of unhappy beauty

Hope hurt
Hate’s heaviness grated
She forsook conversation
And returned to a silence that smiled
Upon the words
That were never meant
To fill it

Lonely Promiscuity

'A lady of innocence and virtue' he reads quietly
As his mates chant 'we're off on the pull'
Before one stoops over the page and grins
'Would you like a kingdom with that too?!'

'A goodly man who'll do me right' she scribbles in her diary
As her mates sing 'we're gunna get some action'
Before her twin snatches it away and sneers
'You've been watching too many movies'

His mates plaster him with cheap aftershave,
Gel, and some imitation shirt,
'Not that we've got to, is it mate
I mean you only gotta get 'em a drink'

Her mates tell her to put a shorter skirt on
And a bigger push-up bra,
'Get those shots right down ya girl
You're so ditzy and fun when you're drunk'

'Some one I could talk to; they'd understand me' he thinks
As a girl with ironed hair splutters 'ya fancy a dance?!'
Before he can decline, she's cavorting on every angle,
Reeking of the last guys sweat...

'Some one who'll love me for who I am' she thinks
As a guy leans over and grunts 'fucking nice tits'
Whilst trying to rub his groin on her behind
Before puking on her shoes...

Trampling on each other's souls to a violent rhythm
To the same soulless drone
The perfect setting for a philistine crime
They can't even hear the church toll midnight.

He sighs in the morning -
Heads straight for the door
Steps on a photo of her man
The sun's different from the last he saw

She cries in the morning -
Heads straight for the shower
Nobody told her about lonely promiscuity...
The life of an exile.



Auspicium Melioris

You came upon me blooming
With breathless aching eyes,
You were late
But not sorry
For butterflies don't apologise
To the flowers they would rob.

Besides, t'was not the time for sorrys
The moon yawns when we would blossom
The breeze coughs when we would speak
And the stars, they would bury us in yesteryear,
Given half a chance.

No, now's the time to appreciate
I saw you once,
A laughing butterfly
In your prime,
And not when the world has failed you and,
A broken reed
You die.



Saeva Indignatio Cor Laberabatet et Mentum Conturbabat


He Whispered to the candle's Flame
To Lick away his Sins
For surely Dido's fate was Lighter
Than this Crucifixion on Cupid's whim

All that Love Bequeathed him
Was Shadows, broken Dreams and Mem'ries -
The Rotten fruits of Yesteryear
That Reminded him of a meaning

Left wandering on the Backstreets of paintings
Between his lost sweetheart
And his Death
Leaving him one Hopeless salvation:
To Cry and Forget.



Arcadia

We'd mumble fragile words
On country lanes
Where only bramble-bushes
In Autumnal glow
Could hear

We'd steal kisses
On the benches
Raised on lonely hills
Under a crisp winter blanket
Of delicious frost

We would lie in fields
That the blazing sun
Had kissed
Roll in straw laughter
And Consummate it

Few years later
Fresh from defeat
Arcadia promises much again
A new Queen
Takes her seat...


Femme fatale

Shackled to MTV:
Oracle of 'the culture'
In Perpetual motion with 'the fad'
Boasting about her 'magazine complex'
With its patronising pseudo-cure
As if it made her interesting
Lost in an orgy of the insignificant
An ocean of fiction badly disguised
Which drips in garish colours
From great big generic celebrity smiles
Invented wants and fancied needs
The consumer-customer par excellence
With straight dyed hair, a made-up face,
Ash-tray breath, plastic tits, a rotting gut
And done the whole 'feminist thing' with men
'Cos Cosmipolitan told me to'
Enervated by the drone of a 'dancing' rhythm
A poor excuse for a human.


Homage to Nietzsche

To know the truth
Is still to feels its steel
And suffer ten hundred fold
because of fools' peace
Wear your wounds
With pride on your thoughts
Like a diadem on the brow
Innocence might lose its shine
And love, its gloss
Time might lay thee low
Reclining - smiles, laughing at your loss
But though mens sana corpore sano
Is not a bad command
Only spectacles are worth their slot
Life doesn't rot with these pages of mine
But glows in gladiator blood
Slowly watch the dressings
of civilisation wear a little thin
Trampled by its own design
A dirge of ugly rhythm
The heathens present our only hope
No salvation do they promise
But the rise and fall of a day in time
And a truth that ever hurt.

Free Verse to a Boy and a Duck

Prisoners of the office drift by – they’ve been liberated for a day. Heaving in their topman coats and even blander wives. The younger men, divorced from a world of meaning, waft, in this menagerie of souls. They’re so cool with their cynical eyes and totalitarian t-shirts. The babies and old ones on the benches laugh at everybody in between. ‘Slaves of money of sex’ they say, but no one seems to hear. They can only hear their own voices hidden behind ray bans, mags, and phones. A little boy attacks some ducks. ‘A step forward on the human face my friend – It must be the only way out of this place’, this nutters masque, this fest of kitsch, of nothing more affirmative than God’s grace.


What path?

Run, run! Through thicket, quick!
Choose a path, dark or lit,
To make your own
But do not slack
For time weighs heavy
Upon your back

Dash this way, then that,
Think back and forth!
Have dusty tomes served your cause?
Or did they spurn
The vigour, the élan,
The heat and burn?

Stop! Halt!
There’s water deep,
A silvery grave for you to leap:
No monsters or demons lurk within
But a mirror, vast,
That reflects your sin.

Look, Espy the waters source!
Guineveres and eyes
From which tears are forced
All claiming they loved you… until they did not
A waste of time
Or heaven sublime.

Pause! Inhale the heavy air,
The grey carpet divine, those lofty stairs,
A painting of doom and ecstasy
Nature’s tragic symphony:
A music which will drown out the noise
Long after we are returned to silence.

Henry Hopgood Phillips

THÜRINGEN WALD

Hi, crazy world, found that I had become a prisoner in Thüringen, so I decided to make the most of it (in other words constant trips to Berlin were too expensive. At first I reckoned I could go up every weekend, but this proved to be wildly optimistic. Trouble is the cost of travel, accommodation, meals etc etc and when all of these bills arrive at once it means a Hell of a bill.) Last weekend I took the bike onto the train, bought a Thüringen hopper ticket, went to Arnstadt, the place where JS Bach held his first appointment as Kantor, then proceeded to get lost in the Thüringen Wald. Got off the train somewhere nr Meiringen and cycled to Suhl, a place held in limbo somewhere in the God know´s where of the Thüringen landschaft, infested with oodles of Rentners. Seemed bizarre, this small city with blocks of flats splitting to the seams with Rentners hanging out of balconies, stuffed into portmantea seats and tiny dungeons. Then I took the train to Plau, another village located inbetween Arnstadt, Suhl and Ilmenau. I waited in this orifice of nothingness for 2 hours, then the train to Ilmenau arrived and I drove back with it, enviously eyeing up someone´s mountain bike as a putative replacement for my own chopper, an alu bike long past its sell by date which earlier bore me between Meiringen and Suhl, but almost disintegrated half-way between much to my consternation. Luckily I´m handy with the bike mechanics, so with a rubber band solution and on a wing and a prayer, I struggled onwards. Arnstadt is undoubtedly an interesting place, a little place of innocence and joy where it all began. I mean the Old Testament of music. There was a wedding taking place in the Bachkirche and friendly locals (???) arm in arm. Public events of any kind embarrass the Hell out of me so I went to hide in the shade while admiring the Bach statue there, which shows Bach truly relaxed, a very modern take on his memory. There isn´t even an echo of Germany´s darker moments there, just broad avenues filled with light, giant trees shaking in the wind and windy locals giving it their all. For some backside music go to the local pub, where loads of beerish swine fart out all the motets and recitatives you love. JS Bach roll over in your grave. I´m going back to camcorder a rendition of Bach´s Christmas Oratorio by the choir of Bach arses, the Knieper, Bogglemindstraße.