A Sunday in Stuttgart
After our visit to the Linden-Museum
on a stroll between Hegel and Schiller Platz,
I was pondering an Afghan miniature
like a porthole on the retreat
from Maiwand, aka defeat,
with its fallen private, wounded horse
and grey, manhandled cannon
being trundled back before
their orderly green-flag-bearing horde.
However brave those Bodentruppen were,
that chanced-on Afghan miniature
shows how little its small war
is well-recalled by our Reading lion
(lists of dead support each paw)
teaching what with his teeth and mute roar?
‘Du mußt deine Grenzen kennen lernen!’
was what a harassed mother muttered
scolding one of her two children
as we found our way through the twilit street.
And I could hardly believe my ears.
That ‘limits’ for them would be ‘frontiers’.
~
Also by Peter Robinson: Retrieved Attachments, English Nettles, Bonjour Mr Inshaw, The Constitutionals, Foreigners, Drunks and Babies.