Relinquishing Berlin
For Monika
Picture the woman on the station platform,
wind pasting woollen coat to her legs;
at her feet a small checked suitcase.
The train she waits for will take her
back to Berlin and into a future
that could once have happened:
her name known all over Germany
and beyond, to Hollywood,
her face gleaming in magazines,
long legs in their seamed stockings
insured for thousands, her red hair
a trademark, famous, glamorous.
This is the future she relinquished
to marry the poet she met at language classes,
how she was tempted to Liverpool,
how she was wrapped in his love
until his heart gave out, leaving her
stranded in a strange country.
No-one she loved is left in Berlin.
Her suitcase is full of poems,
her arms full of grandchildren.
*Angela Topping has been writing poetry since childhood. She has published three solo collections and a book of children's poetry, The New Generation, is imminent from Salt. She works as a freelance writer, poet-in-schools and writes critical books for Greenwich Exchange. She wrote the poetry section in an OUP textbook for the new GCSEs.