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Luminberg

All of their stories began as thus —


“It was 1942, and the Viennese and the

Serbs were each handed a box of

territory on the coast — a bit like Trieste.”


There was an old market square,

with hundreds of grocers,

all peddling their half-rotten onion skins.


There were dignitaries, and Stalinists,

but more than anything, this place was

a stronghold of learning and exchange.


Would you date anybody from Luminberg?

This was a trilingual people.


They spoke in tongues, whilst waiting for their

ships to dock, a bit like Marseilles,

in the fog of the dawn of human deception.


Their antics were few;

their crazes, many.

They struggled with the Lord’s Prayer,

as much as you and I.


If you met a Luminberger

somewhere down South,

like in Senegal, or out East,

like in Shanghai —


you would never speak directly;

it would always be,

through the use of an interpreter.


Luminberg, Luminberg.

Give me a bit of the old country;

before we were this innocent.


Luminberg, Luminberg.

You only wanted to be free.


Luminberg, my dearest sorrow;

love me, hold me:

there is no tomorrow.


Luminberg, Luminberg.

Let me be, a wedding for Thee.


*


From "Buddha's Broken Fingernail," by Daniel Viragh.

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