Berlin

 

Onward into the heart of the city, the capital

a landscape dark with a sinister eeriness

where the hastily erected new, had replaced the bombed

where pockmarked facades

bore witness to bloody ferocious conflict

Along cobbled streets where some buildings remained

to dark shadowy figures moving silently

a place shrouded in guilt and shame

the doomed silence of an aftermath

the suffering of revenge and hate

Shouts and slogans were no more 

now only to be found scrawled on ravaged walls

Broken pavements, weeds sprouting

through any available crevice

Roads cordoned off for fear of unsafe buildings

or some unexploded bomb, awaiting detonation

A rickety tram rolled by with yellow stained glass windows

and a smoky interior 

The vanquished had their abode here

This city had turned its back on the world

it could not look anyone in the face

as it possessed no saving grace

Just desserts had been meted out 

on this Prussian earth and not too late

This, the city of the damned

in a war weary God forsaken land