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Objective Correlative

By David Holper

"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion." T.S. Eliot

Imagine a poem about the old Germany
the one in which you had to pass to through
Checkpoints A, B, C to travel
from West Germany to East Berlin:

it would by necessity be an act of faith,
dividing what we remember with what you feel obligated to tell:
it would require, too, a certain anxiety: the clock's hands frozen
just past midnight, a scene replete with klieglights, razor wire, guard towers,

armed Russian guards just barely old enough
to shave, or kill. Being young yourself, you would
remain stoic. Dignity is required in transit out of the known world
into the wintery ice fog. With your orders in hand,

you must enter the little green hut, just beyond
your car, slide the paperwork under the mirrored glass
and wait in the silence, with Joe and Vladimir
frowning at you.

No one will speak,
whether you say something in Russian or not,
whether, as you go out, you wish the guard a good evening
or offer to trade the open Playboy on the dash

for a belt buckle or a fur hat. Afterwards, you must drive directly
110 km from A to B: until you enter Berlin, you cannot leave your car,
whether you break down or run out of gas. At that point,
the poem must advance the alphabet in its proper order,

the landscape undoing all that you think of civilization
so that, if the poem does not confound us
with anything that challenges our faith in the world we know,
then and only then, the car will pass into the city—and beyond

Checkpoint Charlie, through the last barrier, and you will discover yourself
in East Berlin, the dirty fog drenching everything in doubt.
Once there, you'll find a troubling belief will manifest in the lines
of wet laundry strung outside the windows, the raw bullet holes

from decades before, the anxious gray faces. If you hear anything
resembling a scream, do your best to ignore it. Tell yourself it is only
your imagination. Maybe later you will stop at the Alexanderplatz for a souvenir,
(though aside from the vodka and the Cuban cigars, there will be nothing worth buying)

and watch the snow pile up in gray slush, effacing everything,
everyone. If you notice the man following you in the charcoal colored suit,
you must not make a scene. He will not bother you,
as long as you don't ask about what is torturing you. Keep moving, keep pretending

that the dead are not following you with every step. Only in this way
will we ever believe this nightmare to have been true.