Sunday 9 November 2014

Another poem by Maria Barnas

Der Doppelgänger


I started to read Der Doppelgänger in Paris
in a room that slightly swayed
It seemed well-known to me.

In all the streets I see a house where I can live
for I come from low-lying marshlands.
A descendant of land-seekers at sea

whalers and pirates I have a soft spot
for England an interest in France
and a preference for Russians who’ve strayed

into German. In Berlin I came across Der Doppelgänger
in a house that was just like my own.
What I had left behind in Paris

and would be able to approach from Berlin began
to thrust itself upon me in ever more concrete forms.
I let this happen for it was a bridge

that would mend loose ends in space and lacks in me.
But who says bridges have to be completed
and where are the words that I read.

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