after Robert Hass, “Winged And Acid Dark”

with text borrowed from “Potsdamer Platz Masterplan” by Hilmer & Sattler

 

noon and the graphic sun spokes

of the Sony dome

casting a series of hard-edged shadows.

one of the hottest, most exciting building sites in Europe, and the

 

luminous without illuminating

a virtual city inside the real one

 

Potsdamer Platz, November 2025.

 

people (the look of tourists with their faces

to the sun) appearing

disappearing. Like a circus act

under the big top. Legoland and Starbucks

in the real world, locals late for work,

due to its location straddling the erstwhile border between east and west,

 

the embedded metal strip trailing

the wake of the wall. I don’t think any

of these windows was the window

from which Hannelore was thrown.

“Like a bag of cement”

she’d say, (which) you need a lot of

to rebuild after the war.

reconnecting the two halves of the city in a way

that was symbolic as well as physical, helping to heal the historical wounds

 

I do think this is what Hass refers to

when he refers to the spitting into the mouth

 

the way we use words

to conjure things

when things don’t seem real. Not like Hannelore,

exactly, but the other thousands

square became the focus of attention again, as a

 

sometimes words aren’t stronger than

the weapons of war. It’s hard to imagine them

 

or her, but I do still hunger to be excused

from becoming either. And I do feel a bit

akin to the squirrel, digging

in the garbage, feeling

heal the historical wounds by

 

safe with the humans but knowing

where the escape routes are

 

it’s best to naturalize the design

of memory

won in 1992, the dormant wasteland of Potsdamer Platz

the new architecture and fresh vitality triggered by this mixed-use

this place so steeped in memory but devoid of any physical traces

offering proof of it. Having been abandoned for so long,

 

this is the kind of place I like to lay

my mourning stones. (The crystal clarity

of Basho’s spring rain, settling

beneath the trees.)

 

they weigh down the soul.

was widely perceived as a “linking element” reconnecting