I linger in the Rosenkavalier restaurant,
Eat goulash soup and Wiener schnitzel, sip
Hundertwaßer’s mineral water. Want-
ing are only the strains of the marvellous yet mindless trip-
le-time lilt of Johann Strauß’s Blue Danube waltz
To make me feel rather too close to the heart
Of the unbearably kitsch in Österreich, of the cloying and false.
Yet just here really is the barycentre, the start
Of all the Gaßen in Mitteleuropa. This place,
A mezzanine in the Südbahnhof, is station-
ed between the east and south platforms; deft
Migrations of peoples across this anonymous space
Route them back to every ex-nation
Of the Royal and Imperial. Austria is what is left.
Eat goulash soup and Wiener schnitzel, sip
Hundertwaßer’s mineral water. Want-
ing are only the strains of the marvellous yet mindless trip-
le-time lilt of Johann Strauß’s Blue Danube waltz
To make me feel rather too close to the heart
Of the unbearably kitsch in Österreich, of the cloying and false.
Yet just here really is the barycentre, the start
Of all the Gaßen in Mitteleuropa. This place,
A mezzanine in the Südbahnhof, is station-
ed between the east and south platforms; deft
Migrations of peoples across this anonymous space
Route them back to every ex-nation
Of the Royal and Imperial. Austria is what is left.
(3.4.1997)
