Der neuseeländische Künstler Hans Kellett streifte täglich durch die umliegenden Gärten und entlang des Berliner Mauerpfads, um das Gespräch mit den Menschen vor Ort zu suchen. So erblühte eine Serie von Poemen,
die natürlich auch ihren Weg ins Radio fanden.
Hier sind zwei davon…
LOW-MAINTANANCE BORDERS
I’m tending my parents‘ grave here in the Rosenthal Cemetery and I’m trimming the hedge. I think you have to do it twice a year I do it in spring and late summer I don’t know if that’s the right way to do it, but it suits me that way. It’s not raining, and it had to be done, so I thought I’d do it today I’ve been doing this for ten years since my parents died two-thousand-and-one or… yeah… two-thousand… um… nine. Since then. It’s like my little garden, because I don’t have any other garden. And it’s big for a grave – a double grave two by two metres, not just a little spot for an urn. There’s a bit to be done. I decide spontaneously what to plant, and how I wanted something taller, that offered some shade So I chose this Japanese Maple, a little one a couple of roses and the rest more ground cover. I like the maple: it has such a beautiful colour, its reddish leaves. My mother chose this spot when my father died they – so to speak – reserved a double so they are both buried here now. But it’s a beautiful little cemetary and there is a tawny owl up in the church you can see it even in the day. He observes everything he’s always been there, I think as long as… I don’t know how old they get if that’s already the next generation. When I trim the hedge, it should just be a bit straighter afterwards… a bit shorter, a bit narrower otherwise… usually you’d use a string – stretch it along the sides so you have the same height all around and go by that but it’s not such a big hedge what is it? thirty centimetres? or twenty-five? It’ll be enough if I measure it by eye… Then Ines and I walk round to see The tawny owl in the chapel wall – it’s one of three To me it looks first like a loaf of wholemeal bread perched in a niche, til two slit eyes turn bread to head And Jörg’s eyes are both opened now He asks his phone, and tells us how tawny’s been crowned ‘Bird of the Year’ A cloud moves on, the sky’s trimmed clear. GARDENING ON SANDY SOIL The Spree shifts casting drifts of fine sand, scattering its broad banks with silica seeds. And Lisa loves dill, so she hopes that it will grow in the sandy soil of her city satellite. She was fire and flame for a garden. But Prussian sand is stronger-willed than April stronger in its multitude of grains than dill can deal with. In the centre of the sparsely-grassed lawn a stand of tree. Its name means ‘Tree of Life’ and yet it is eternal uninvited guest at burials. Cypressaceae – its sap can stop your planting plans. You can’t compost it. Members of its family hang around like paparazzi like oglers at a car crash, the bouncers at Böcklin’s Hotel California. This sand, though is more giving than the chalky cliffs of The Isle of the Dead. It whispered to Lisa of Old Frites and so they came, the end of season staple - pink, and white, and glossy with butter. Now she’s not planting, but shaping, shifting the soil into a productive patchwork Tonight there’ll be a barbeque and soon she’ll harvest her herbs.Read More