Trier, the Moselle cranes
I take my rest on a rock on the south bank of the Moselle, Beside me two giants wave their cracked and knotty-brown mossencrusted arms, Out over the lazily lapping backwash at the restless river’s edge as if to say, Hey, wait for us; we would like to come too. We are tired of standing here; our work is long done, please take us with you, Years ago we listened attentively as the men who used us spoke of your wanderings, Men with grimy faces tanned by the Eifel sun, brown as the leather aprons they wore, their hands coarse as sandpaper, We heard them tell of your serpentine course whose path you scooped out for yourself and with little help given, How you hastened eastwards to join your more celebrated sister, Weighed down with the burdens created by men as they placed their fortunes in your hands. How you wove past vertiginous castles, 65
