Hamburg Symphony

Symphonic Prose in Three Movements

I. Adagio

Eight Hours in Hamburg

You have eight hours alone in Hamburg today.
What are your plans?
“I’ll start at Café Paris, and we’ll see from there…”
I didn’t even get through that door –
It was too crowded.

So I’ll eat strudel at Café Roncelli.
That too did not work out:
No strudel before 11:00.
One must understand that one cannot plan.
Otherwise, disappointment becomes a way of life.
There is always a structure,
but work is required to discover it.
There is a path; I am moving along it,
but I still haven’t understood where.
Perhaps it will become clear on the next page.

Walking in the Air

Sometimes I feel that I am walking,
but there is no floor beneath me.
As if at any moment I might fall.
From such a fall,
I will not get up.

Choosing Nothing

I have a strange tendency.
At times, when there are too many options,
I choose nothing.
As if the very act of choosing
were an injustice.
So it is better not to choose.

In other cases,
I choose the simplest,
the most basic.
I hope I won’t act like this when I have to
Find a new job.
I might find myself
back in the supermarket.

II. Scherzo

Picture with a Cinnamon Pastry

I’m sitting on a bench on Mönckebergstraße, opposite Roncelli.
There is a shop that is booby-trapped with all kinds of cinnamon pastries
adorned with whipped cream and a range of colours not to be found in the natural world.
A sextet of tourists, armed with polyester pom-pom hats and puffer jackets, stand and stare,
longing for the sugar bomb.
They take pictures,
they tag,
image-posing, having-the-time-of-their-lives types.

In my head, only one thing:
How fast this thing would make me run to the bathroom.
When the “book” hour was over,
that same sextet of aliens moved on.
The next picture is waiting for them around the corner.
Perhaps this time,
with a sausage.

At the Museum

I continued on to the Kunsthalle.
I didn’t have much time left alone in the city.
Soon, she will get off work.
Tomorrow I fly back early in the morning.
In the end, I ordered the tickets for this evening’s concert at the Laeiszhalle:
a Brahms piano concerto,
Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead.
Maybe I already live there, I wondered to myself.

By now, I was tired of criticising the tourists;
I turned to the gallery of the Dutch Old Masters.
Here I am again, sitting on a bench.
A square room,
the floor, dark brown parquet.
The walls, light blue.
Eight gilded frames and a bit of text between them.
In one corner, a white marble cast.

I retreated from the museum,
without even saying hello to the Wanderer,
the first time in my life I’ve committed such a vile act.
Perhaps I’ll soon go back to right the wrong.
In the meantime, I’m at the museum café.
Maybe there I’ll be able to write;
My back hurts from the benches with no backrest.

I went over to the barita,
I saw that a double espresso costs 4.5,
An Americano, 4.9.
I asked for an Americano with a double shot.
She said that it costs 6.

“A euro fifty for a drop of hot water?” I asked her in astonishment.
“Yes,” she replied, without emotion.
I paid her.
There’s another retreat.

A Sick Man

As a sort of desperate act to recover,
I arranged for myself a weekend packed with the highest art, with my beautiful wife, in the port city.
We began on Friday at the Elbphilharmonie with Honegger and Strauss.
Last night with Puccini, Tosca at the opera house.
And this evening, Brahms and Rachmaninoff at the Laeiszhalle.
All this is very fine,
but is it not an act of criminal avoidance,
an act of sick blindness?

Instead of dealing with my problems,
I pour money over them,
expecting “Art” to heal me.
Why should it?
Is it blind?
Stupid?
Does it not see what I’m trying to do?

As it heals,
So it also kills.
For there is one thing art is incapable of tolerating:
the liar,
The dishonest man.

I naïvely think I am leading myself to a hospital,
But for me it is in fact a slaughterhouse.

Get up!
Wake up!
Lest you end up where you deserve:
not at the opera,
the concert halls,
the art museum,
But the central station!
The Hauptbahnhof!
(The Central Train Station)

That’s where you belong,
You scoundrel!

Do you think it’s a coincidence
that the last work you will hear
is Isle of the Dead?

Get up,
go stand before the Wanderer.
You have one last chance.

III. Allegro ordinaro

On the Summit

A moment before I enter that room,
a moment before I climb to the summit.
I sit for a moment on that same uncomfortable bench.
The back pain is no longer felt.
As I climbed the stairs,
a chorus resounded in my ears,

Laufet, Brüder
Laufet…
Run, brothers,
run…

Freudig
wie ein Held…
zum Siegen.
Joyfully,
like a hero…
toward victory!

Laufet!

Wie ein Held…
zum Siegen!

A deep breath.

O Wanderer,
I am guilty.
I used you as a tool,
as an excuse,
I forgot…
I forgot…
It is all me.
Only I can change it.
The resurrection comes only from me.

Aufstehen!
Rise!
Ich will Aufstehen!
I will rise!

Everything is in my hands,
under my control.
Not to the Hauptbahnhof.
Not to aimless drifting,
not to be at the mercy of the dead creators.
I am a creator too,
I am alive!
I will live!
Not dependent on anyone,
not on Puccini,
not on Brahms,
not on anyone.
Only on myself.

If there is no floor,
I will tile it with my own hands.
If there is no path,
I will pave it.
If there is no music,
I will compose it.
If there is no resurrection,
I will live it!

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Hamburg Symphony was written in Hamburg in December 2025. The text published here is a lightly revised version of the one performed live on stage. Those who wish to hear it aloud can find the filmed reading on YouTube here:

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