Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Foot of pyrenees
weeping

wiping your glasses
walter

jesus wept

you were betrayed
by camarades

sitting
in cafeterias
in california

announcing

beautiful benjamin's
tears

ours
as we wander

around arcades
beginning of new

century collapsed
Tal Afar
2005

books burnt
by american
in military

uniform
practice

crash
culture
with armoured personnel
carriers

of present
plague

riding winds
into rooms

we will
not know
bodies atomised

Bakouba

buried
underneath

forward
bases

benjamin behind
every artifact
of culture

barbarism
comes to crush

circle
within circle

witness walter
shake bottle
before window
knowing enough

enough

death to share
with assembled

mourners moan
night
after
night

walter wept
knowing too

much in moment
within moment

forgetting
about remembering

how he
could see
without spectacles

dreamt daily
what we
live

now
dying

now dying

let me
detail
how

a people die

not
by bombs

but
by bradley
tanks tearing fabric

carpets
of chronologies
created

in struggle
dearest sister

in struggle
dearest sister

walter witnesses
holding spectacles
so

he can see
perfectly

dancing on waters
of Portbou

port
failed

him he
perished
in panic

french
failed

him he
knew way

with baggage
manuscripts

mementos

him he
we

murdered

ô him he
we murdered

sailing
on sea
of skin

's shore

line
under line this
this day
weaving words
from wind

will you
walk on

witness

camarade sister
it will
not stop

raining

within wretched
bodies

bodies
benjamin
broke with books

suspicious
remembering revolvers

how
you held
tripped

trigger

lights on
& off

fountains
of flesh

beloved brother

beloved brother

break boat
down here
portbou

create
confidence
in corpses

Christopher Barnet

Christopher Barnet

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