a Karen Chamisso poem

 Nearer my God to thee

„An Bord der »Titanic« befanden sich fünfundzwanzig Millionäre, die zusammen mehr als 100 Millionen Pfund repräsentieren.“

I liked to look and not look

in Dad’s book at the picture

Of the iceberg that rammed the Titanic

A telltale smear of paint on its flank

- I had nightmares about that ship going down

My birthday cake with the candles lit

Enormously drowning In the dark North Atlantic

A liner’s hold scrawled over the blood freezing tide.

My friend John recently took me

To Rue des Ecoles to point out the crossing

Where the absent minded mythographer

was run down by a laundry truck

Nearer my God to me I sang out

Mixing up the chords and dischords of time

Born for collision and some final knackery

Iceberg, laundry truck or drowning colder

(“Le Cœur est un organe femelle » )

than the North Atlantic’s spasms

stripping away

our itty monkey manners.

- Karen Chamisso