'Hölderlin'

('Hölderlin' was the code name used by an East

German poet when she spied for the Stasi.)

Why? Because after you, what you had said,

What you had put about among humankind,

Even bigger lies were possible and on your highs

That deep came disappointment. After you

We lived like foreigners in our mother country

Among the trades and functions, among the shells

Not one inhabited by a living kind

Of human. There was always a word for us

Because of you, more than a word, the thing,

Your doing, that want, that powerless power

When faces lifted from the text and whispered 'Come

Into the open, friend, oh come, oh make

It true, the spirit quickening through all the veins

Of a republic's life, this very earth,

Ours here - if not now, when?' All that

In a mother country of old men, always

Men and old, the same old men and their

'Not now, not yet'. I sided with the liars

Against the disappointed, I wear your name

Emptily, like grief, like vain revolt.

David Constantine. Collected Poems. Bloodaxe Books (2004)