Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/0yuH4tIQIYY) 18.11.2022.
BERLIN, GOING ON 2022
Wide boulevards
daring, sleek architecture
Museum Island
old-style brick church
children playing in the park
a dog on a leash
’tis so gemütlich
a village in the city
posh residences
roadblocks, loud sirens
foreign president in town
Oktober Bier Fest
city tour bus
traffic clogged, night has fallen
suddenly the woods
the driver growls
“I go home and you get out!”
stranded in the wilds
in the maze of
the Holocaust Memorial
your blood screams
little bronze squares
embedded in the pavement
“here lived …died at Auschwitz.”
Brandenburger Tor
what stands at the upper center?
a blurred Swastika
How eerie was
the grayness of Ost Berlin
now a feast of lights
oversized city
once open, once bedevilled
free and bustling again
Tram, U-Bahn, S-Bahn
linking east, west, north and south
people of all colors
About the Author: A humanist with roots in Central, Southern Africa, and the Mediterranean, Albert Russo has been acclaimed by important authors, such as James Baldwin, Edmund White, Martin Tucker, Douglas Parmee of Oxford University, Joseph Kessel, Pierre Emmanuel, and Jean d’Ormesson, all three of the Académie Française, as well as by his African peers, Chinua Achebe and Maurice AMURI Mpala-Lutebele (University of Lubumbashi, DR Congo).
His seminal work, the AFRICAN QUATUOR, set in DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, has appeared in his own English and French versions, as well as in translations (Italian and Dutch), in over 20 editions worldwide. All in all, his work has been translated into about 15 languages. SPEAK TO ME, MOTHER BELOVED (2019) is dedicated to his adored mother and to POETRY, with about 140 poems and as many photos in both black and white and in color, that he took during his years on the four continents in which he has resided, and during his travels around the world. His novel co-written with Jeanette Skirvin is TEL AVIV’S ETHIOPIAN QUEEN, was published in 2021 by l’Aleph in Sweden. Also published in 2022, The Chambers of My Heart ~ Venice, Paris and New York ~ a novel by Albert Russo, with 50-odd photos His most recent French novels are MÉMOIRES D’UN FILS DE NAZIS and LE CAP DES ILLUSIONS. He is also known worldwide (in English, French and Italian) for his award-winning crossover series of philosophical humor GOSH ZAPINETTE ! read by the young at heart from age 13 to …113. There are so far 17 episodes, and it is ongoing. Websites: www.albertrusso.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Russo
