Berlin Letters

                 1
Berlin is bright and sunny.
March 8, 1963.
On the phone this morning
I forgot to wish you a happy holiday.
When I hear your voice, I forget the world. 
Many happy returns, my beauty.
                                                8 March 1963

                 2
In four days I'll be in Moscow.
This separation will also end, thank God, and I'll return.
I'll leave it behind like a rainy road.
New separations will follow,
I'll dip into new wells,
I'll take off for somewhere and come back.
I'll run, breathless, to new returns.
Then neither Berlin nor Tanganyika—
nowhere, I'll go nowhere.
I won't return—no boat, no train, no plane. 
No letters will come from me, no telegrams. 
And I won't call you on the phone.
You won't laugh softly at my voice 
or get any more news from me—
you'll be left all alone.
In four days I'll be in Moscow. 
Berlin is bright and sunny.
On the phone you said 
it's spring in Moscow.
This separation will also end, thank God, and I'll return. 
But inside me is the night of our great separation,
your pain of being without me, 
your loneliness.
Loneliness—the tasteless bread of memories, 
   their call to distance.
Maybe three months, maybe three years, 
loneliness will shadow you.
In four days I'll be in Moscow. 
On the phone you said
it's spring in Moscow.
                                                8 April 1963

                 3
I'll be at your side in five hours.
In Berlin
            sunlight, birdsong
                   (it rained this morning),
                       streetcars,
                              and time
                                      fill my hotel room.
Time doesn't move,
it's frozen solid.
You could hang it on a hanger
or cut it with a knife.
It's like being in prison,
              where time
                           is the cruelest guard.
I'll be at the airport in two hours.
In five, in your blue.
Freedom five hours away.
Statues of whoever invented airplanes
should grace the hotel rooms of all returns.

                                                12 April 1963