Salzburg
Mozart is everywhere in this city,
but here we seem to have shaken him off
with a long glass of lemonade
where the Kapuzinerberg halts abruptly
at the end of Stefan-Zweig-Weg.
Rudimentary German knows
that Schweigen is to remain silent.
I, you, he and she,
we all keep our own counsel.
Schweig is the imperative.
On the bridge, banners, voluble,
herald the few just men and women
that diligent search has discovered.
The crowds passing over say
yes, we were like this.
Swifts over the rooftops,
their aerodynamic silhouettes;
the banshee wail of ambulances
approaching and receding
on Christian Doppler's square
where, in Mozart's second Wohnhaus,
things are frozen as they were -
a silencio sostenuto -
as though the door just closed on that last
exit to Vienna and beyond.
David Callin
If you have any thoughts about this
poem, David Callin would
like to hear them
