Stasi

The watchers and the watched.
The watchers watched.
Us.
Allies in the obscene,
Accomplices in the unspeakable.
What unites us is forbidden truth
At last revealed,
Grievous knowledge.
Demolish one wall
And you will have to build another;
There is always a wall of some kind.
Things that once existed
Can cease to exist;
People and countries,
Words,realities,lives.
When you reach that place
Can you still feel love?
The beauty of detail…
That is our obsession,
Our art.
Files,labels,identity cards.
Your thoughts and memories
Belong to the state.
A puzzle you will never solve.
A shredded document
That may or may not contain
The answer.
One knows the reality
But prefers to ignore it,
In order to remain sane.
The streets are still as drab
And ugly as ever;
We still go to work each day;
We are getting old.
There is always a man
Behind a desk,
A tidy desk;
A man who asks questions
And makes decisions.
Certain words
Are no longer in the dictionary,
Certain words
Have been removed.
Or ,perhaps,they were never there;
Memory plays tricks.
We,who longed for purity,
Can never be clean again.
We made our own universe,
Our own hells and heavens,
And named everything within it.
Loyalty and betrayal
Was all we understood-
For a little satisfaction,
A sense of self-importance,
There is nothing a man will not do.
First there is just one enemy,
Then two,then three,
Then millions.
It is spring:
I walk the streets,
Cherryblossom falling
On my head,
The names have changed,
The faces are the same,
I have work to do.