Lights ablaze in the House of Europe, and the Party rolls from room to room: Poland, Romania, Germany, the black triangle of Czechoslovakia.
You can walk Europe comfortably with a plastic shopping bag, Western Europe, that is, forests and country neatly manicured. A Sunday stroll sort of feeling.
In Eastern Europe, you can do the same thing, though you must lift your steps higher, over the rubble, that is.
The Berlin Wall is falling down, each chunk a souvenir sponsored by Smirnoff.
Who was that poet who whispered, "Death is a maestro from Germany"?
Away in America, Raymond Carver, as the provinces of his body revolted, gasped our daily losses from ruined lungs. "It comes down to love," he said.
What we hear is anger in its orbit. Falling piano notes. The last of the rain down brickwork. Guttering full.
Something like sounds of water hitting a serving dish. A couple of taps.
It's that hour. A train, of course, fading in and out of suburbs. Time running off everywhere.
George Moore shuts his green door against the Catholic glare of Ireland.
A sense of things erased. The whole night sliding down. Lamplight.
Gum leaves as strips of plastic bright through a casual breeze. What can later researchers make of this, the Age of Rapidity?
Things made which had small use then cast aside. The mirage of modern love.
Something swapped for something else. Made better. And that charge of energy varicose-veined as lightning, a little kindness left to hover, unquestioned?
We know it as we get older.
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