The Walter Benjamin Memorial takes you
from a sunny Spanish postcard to oblivion.
The top is a lonely doorway,
appearing unexpectedly, brutally,
at the gate to Cementerio de Portbou;
a traditional graveyard
overlooking the Mediterranean.
It’s straight down.
Inside there is nothing but down
to a sudden clear glass panel;
a literal and metaphorical dead end.
You hang there precipitously
almost falling into the heaving,
rolling sea.
Your fall is broken,
but you get the idea;
It’s the logic of exile and suicide.
Poor Walter Benjamin (and the rest of course).
Etched (in German) are words:
It is more arduous to honour the memory of anonymous beings than that of the renowned. The construction of history is consecrated to the memory of the nameless.
The invitation is to take a lonely path,
to walk as Walter did,
with walls closing in,
fascists on your tail,
and nowhere to hide and no hope.
A walkway to oblivion.
