Go on then, plan for the eternal
with cupola, column and arch:
we’ll number their metres from here, and etch
their shape onto a steel panel,
then tilt and fix it to the top
of this slope that the women who walked
out of the thick dark walls
mixed together from scorched rock,
coating it with soil and seeds
as their husbands advanced beyond the Urals,
and sending footpaths up in spirals
like icing around the new hillside.
The sirens have stopped.
The nightshift crew looks up,
dancing to techno till dawn. An eruption
deposits cut green bottles,
thin layers of new rubble,
across a fossil of concrete.
This hill just won’t keep quiet,
but fidgets on the viscous mantle.
From the Longbarrow Press pamphlet Swamp Area (2012). Listen to Alistair Noon reading this poem on location in Berlin:
Longbarrow Press 