In the city’s melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening . . .
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.
—Bob Dylan
In recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s destruction, begun by citizens chipping at its structure with hammers and chisels on November 9, 1989, the New York Times invited a distinguished group of poets to write works inspired by this occasion. The authors contributing poems to an opinion piece, titled “What Fell Apart, What Came Together,” include Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ewa Lipska, Vera Pavlova, Tomaz Salamun, Zafer Senocak, Bruce Weigl, and C.K. Williams.
In an excerpt from Doty’s fine poem, “The Lesson,” readers are reminded of the scene many of us remember as transmitted on television screens and witnessed around the world that night twenty years ago:
In an excerpt from Doty’s fine poem, “The Lesson,” readers are reminded of the scene many of us remember as transmitted on television screens and witnessed around the world that night twenty years ago:
. . . the night they first scaled the wall,
the people at the top reached down to pull
the others up, and shouted Come on,
Come on! When the guards turned the water cannons on them,
they sprayed back from open bottles of champagne.
Then the broken chunks appeared, in the hands of those
who had loosened them, fragments of concrete
glazed with spray paint inscriptions, scarred
with sledgehammer and chisel: instruments of union.
As I wrote earlier this year in an article, “Bruce Springsteen Sings Bob Dylan’s ‘Chimes of Freedom’ in East Berlin,” relating to the observed event, “the images of young folks opening the barrier between East and West piece by piece remain among the most exciting ever witnessed on television, as their courageous acts indicated a close to the Cold War was at hand. Today, my son possesses a piece of the Berlin Wall, which continues to exist as a concrete reminder of the value of freedom.”
In addition, I suggested readers celebrate the historic moment by revisiting the following video of Bruce Springsteen performing Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” to hundreds of thousands of dancing and clapping Germans in an East Berlin concert just a year before the wall crumbled.
2 comments:
Michael Jackson performed in front of the Reichstag on, I think, the same date, and became the subject of scrutiny by the Stasi. Why is it that he never seemed to get the credit for anything positive he did while alive?
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