By Heidi Trautmann
It is always good to have a group of friends around the world who keep one informed on extraordinary things happening. There was the Long Night of Museums, first established in Berlin in 1997 and now quite successful in 120 cities all over Europe.
This year’s Long Night of Museums was opened and celebrated with a romantic poetry rain dropped by a helicopter circling over the Island of the Museums. 100.000 poems created by 80 poets from Germany and Chile reached the ground and were falling onto fascinated people stretching out their hands towards the poetic rain; my friend in Berlin caught three of them which she sent to me. Signs of brotherhood and peace, signs of freedom. The performance was also meant to celebrate the 200th anniversary of independence of Chile.
Poetry Rain is a worldwide art event which was first created by a group of Chilean artists in 2001and was since performed in five places such as Santiago de Chile (2001), Dubrovnik/Croatia in 2002, Guernica/Basque Country (2004) and Warsaw/Poland (2009) and now in Berlin in cooperation with the Literary Studio Berlin. The basic idea is to make a statement against war and for reconciliation and to reach millions of people to open their hearts for poetry and to strengthen its position in society. “A cloud of words over a city does not change its history but adds a new meaning.”
Poems instead of bombs, they say.
Stay tuned
By Hendrik Rost, (translated by H.Trautmann)
The only thing which counts in life
Is the beginning of life.
The rest is a warp of time.
And washing up.
For some it is success
Or talent for languages.
It does not say
When it starts
For some with the moment of fertilisation
For others while cars crash.
Don’t wait
For the one or the other.
You will be met.
In your rompers
Or in your favourite pants
Grey and worn out
Getting too tight
For our world.
We should try to have a performance like this in Cyprus, thousands of poems by our Cypriot poets raining down on our heads and entering our minds.