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Heidelberg Home
Andrew H. Oerke
Sometimes I go to places where I am happier
thinking about them than I was back then,
so real happiness is on Memory Lane.
Things happen too fast for us to enjoy them.
There was the Schloss, the Altebrucke, the Altstadt,
the university and the Philosophen Weg
and its Kleistgrab. Here was a city that lived
in the shadow of the past. But the sun of Now
was bright on castle walls and garden paths.
Shadows stalked us in the streets at night
and we couldn’t tell them apart from the dark.
Frequently I go back there in my mind.
We read Sartre, Heidegger, and Brecht
like a double play team that never missed
for they passed out startling new insights like tickets
to the secret society. The racket
of the streetcars rattled us to Kaesekuchen n Kafe,
Wuerstchen n Bier. We strolled through our thoughts
as if we were detectives with a full deck
of clues, and it made life come alive
and be significant; and every phrase we begged
from the sage and bountiful air was what
it could be if style were king. Your cigarette
dangled Bogart-like from your smart smirk. The city
loved us and we loved it back. Back then it ws
our mind-home but not as real as it is now
in retrospect in whose framework I am
a detective melting into his long-lost clues.
