« Wenn Du Mich Siehst »

“Wenn du mich siehst…”

Tony Jolley 04/09/2022    

Some people throw stones into rivers

To see ripples upon the surface,

Some engrave stones in river-bed rocks

And cast them into the future

As a prophetic warning

And sign of human understanding:

Empathy across the centuries.

The summer of 2022

Has just been declared

The hottest in Europe

For some 500 years.

Lakes shrank.

Rivers deep enough to dive in

Dropped to levels that

Wouldn’t float a little’un’s lilo-bed

Let alone a loaded barge.

Then this August,

On the almost dry bed of the Elbe

On the Czech/German border

A so-called ‘Hunger Stone’ was found

With the chilling, chiselled legend:

« Wenn du Mich Siehst, Dann Weiner ».

« If you see me: then weep »

My first thought was of a vague memory

Of Herr Gent, my German Teacher

Drumming it into us

[Well, into me – I wasn’t good at German]

That ‘Wenn’ meant ‘if’,

But ‘Wann’ meant ‘when’.

I reckon the writer-chiseller

Should have had the courage

Of his (or her) convictions

And set the first word as ‘Wann’: When.

It turns out this stone has predecessors

At least as far back as the early 14 hundreds

And successors graven in ten years of drought

Between 1707 and 1893.

We’d better get chiselling ourselves

And reserve a good bit of rock-surface space:

I suspect we’re going to need it most years

From now on….

The increasing frequency telling

Its story for posterity….

… Perhaps for future passing aliens

To deduce our story.

Inspiration. John Henley article in the Guardian

19^th August 2022