Free A Pretty Sight by David O'Meara Page B

erhalten’
‘
Despite all the powers closing in, hold yourself up
’
    –
Goethe
    After the war, he stays underground,
    still wary of the necessary
    horse trades and occupying powers.
    Le Monde, Die Zeit, New York
    Times
; Vietnam, Rwanda, Srebrenica:
    years go by. In the stone arch of a busy
    coffee house, Sophie is waving him over
    past the billiards table, unfazed, looking
    for all the world like she’s just
    breezed in from 1933
    and there’s no nightmare to come.
    But the picture’s all wrong, her face
    unaged, and where are Alex,
    Willi or Christoph?
    Sophie sighs, presses
    a hand against her brother’s cheek.
    ‘Hans, it’s because we died.’
    She describes the trial,
    its forgone verdict, the bulbs
    that burned all night in their cells,
    the shared last cigarette
    in the courtyard. Hans has turned
    the details over again,
    his memory tightening the blurs
    like a Leica lens while the tension
    in his face subsides
    in the respite of knowing
    at least they tried. They’re even laughing,
    aping the parrot shrieks
    of Friesler’s indignation,
    gossiping over the Führer’s last pose,
    Hans with a finger
    cocked against his temple.
    They order
café viennois
.
    Sophie pokes at the dollops of whip
    while ordered traffic crawls
    past the painted glass
    of the window. The newest papers
    in wooden clips
    fanned across
    the billiard nap. Skinhead rallies,
    latest dictatorships. Hans makes
    another hopeless gesture.
    Did everything change, or nothing?
    Coffees done, they consider the years
    like doors they never entered,
    as if history’s just a lot
    of people trying
    to get from one room
    to another. Outside, Hans
    mounts the steps of a slowing tram.
    Sophie ties her hair back
    with an abalone barrette
    as she turns
    down Leopoldstrasse
    and waves, looking for all the world
    like she’s going to haunt it.

Vicious
(or, On Dissent)
    CHARACTERS
    Socrates
    Sid Vicious
    SOC .
    Wait, stranger! Why the rush? This place
    just turns upon itself, so to leave is only a step
    to hurrying back. What’s the difference
    if you pause and talk? Those scars
    across your chest and face: did you once march
    with spear and shield? I fought
    at Potidaea and Delium. I’m Socrates, of Athens.
    SID .
    Yeah, I’ve heard that bit. Righteous bastard
    with all the questions. I must be dead,
    to run into the likes of you.
    SOC .
    Was it an accident? A sudden
    fall from craggy heights? Or did you disturb
    some starving animal in its sleep?
    Who gave you those injuries?
    SID .
    I did.
    SOC .
    You?
    SID .
    I cut my chest with broken glass.
    SOC .
    And the scabs on the back of your hands,
    were they not left by spear tips?
    SID .
    That was just a laugh with a cigarette, some game
    we’d play in the Hampstead bedsit.
    SOC .
    What was the purpose?
    SID .
    It was funny. It was supposed to give
    them second thoughts about trying to smack me.
    Show them that anything they’d try
    isn’t half of what I’ve had already.
    SOC .
    Who are they who’d seek to harm you?
    SID .
    Suits and coppers. Punters in the audience. The fucking lot.
    SOC .
    What were the reasons for their enmity?
    SID .
    They didn’t like us. We were wasters
    and fuck-ups who wouldn’t settle for what they
    stood for: blind acceptance, apathy and moderation.
    We pushed some buttons. Got kitted out in handcuffs,
    leather, safety pins and razor blades. Nicked stuff.
    Punch-ups. Three-chord songs with aggro-lyrics.
    Style as revolt, arrogance over ability, violence
    if the music failed. Like Rotten said, it’s worth
    going where you’re least wanted,
    since there’s so much more to achieve.
    SOC .
    Were you an actor, or a rhapsode?
    SID .
    A what?
    SOC .
    A person skilled in reciting verse. Who takes the stage
    at festivals with words stitched together so dramatically
    that the rhythm of the music loads the crowd with feeling.
    Years ago I met another rhapsode, who came from Ephesus.
    I convinced him that the passion of his art passes through him
    from gods into the audience;