Bridgehead

Stately the old bridgehead muses over the canal.
Red bricks and a coat of arms,
charms the new bridge will never have.
Stronger, yes, and taller too,
but made from things that don’t grow.

Bigger ships need taller bridges.

50 years since they took her from him,
her crooked heart all black and rotten,
but not forgotten.
A plaque they put up, picture too,
commemorative, as they do,
living such short lives.

And so he watches, swans and ships,
and desperate souls flung off the bridge.
Oh, they jumped off the old one, too,
but not so many.

A lot more than you’d think!
says Millie from across the way,
she’s with the fire brigade,
she knows about these things.

They don’t put them in the papers anymore,
no need to advertise the spot.

The bridgehead cares not
who hears his lullaby,
as swans and ships and lives float by,
their crooked hearts all black and rotten.
But not forgotten.

Broken Clock

Still got that old clock I bought a while ago,
blue,
with fluorescent hands that glow
and watch me sleep at night.
It never worked, but it’s still ticking.

Sometimes.

I can’t bring myself to put it away,
at least once a day
I look up from my affairs,
hearing a tick and a tock,
reminded of a spark of life
still in the clock.

Like in roots under rocks,
rotten and soft.

It might just be showing another world’s time
maybe it’s not broken, but by design
made to measure
other things.

In a place where at noon the night begins
and the hands turn
widdershins.

Jan Hassmann earned his master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and left immediately after to teach the very same at universities in Beijing and Kunming, China. Fifteen years later he returned to Europe, where he runs an amicable poetry club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.