Trier, the Moselle cranes by Jamie Whelan

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,

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Towering generals precariously balanced on crumbling outcrops, Inspecting the straight-backed green lines, row upon row, their perfect dressing covering the slopes down to the impatient water. If only we could have stood with them, a fitting place for us, For we too are giants, we too could have surveyed the land, And smiled down upon the slate-topped villages beneath, As their crooked chimneys sent their blackened must swirling up to greet us. We would have mounted sentry, secure in our footing, shading our eyes, As we peered into the setting sun, scanning the horizon for the invader. We could have guarded the bridges, marshalled the defence, repulsed the foe, led the counter-attack. Then, later, when darkness first stalked the land, strutting and posturing and propagating its perversions, From our lofty Hunsrück eyrie we would have cried out across valley, hill and stream, Summoning the light to insolate raven-black night…

…Instead we found ourselves here, marooned, lying at anchor, Observing life’s undertow from our station, encamped next to the river, For we cannot see out beyond our more limited horizons, To the west, a little way upstream, the footings of the bridge that was already there when man made us, impede our view. Alas we never did see it crossed by the proud warriors of the empire who created it, their short swords flashing in the midday-sun. To the east that bridge brought to life by a later empire, destroyed likewise by its own presumption, limits our field of vision. No, our gaze is straight ahead, we observe the expanse before us as we have always done, worn out and long ago sated, And yet, and yet…

…Sometimes in the twilight, when the tiny iridescent kingfisher, Which nests on the islet under the lee of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Brücke,

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Plunges into the fast foaming torrent and emerges, wriggling stickleback in beak, triumphant, We giants nod in approbation, and watch as it darts along the riverbank, glistening above the sun-starred waters, Then perches on the white-flaked roof of the derelict landing stage, And warmed by the dying embers of the hot summer’s day, spreads its gleaming wing feathers out to dry.

Jamie Whelan

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