Schultheiss Bierstube

I look down, see there's a new bank where the Schultheiss Bierstube was the summer of 1934. It was a place where Germans drank their märzen, pilsner, kölsch. The buzz of saws in their ears, they would look out windows on the raised ground floor, at ducks on the canal, a rook atop a branch. The barges passed weighed down with lumber, coal, and steel on to the Oder railway line. They drank as long as moments last, their hopes and dreams expressed in zeal, hard labour in a mill or mine. Today, no lager quenches thirst, no ale cools tongues. The winners of the war are punished like the cursed, rooks in the wake of dirty doves. Gleiwitz-Gliwice,17 February 2016