Music has left its cultural confines.
You hear the strings of a sitar
Mingling with big band sounds.
Percussions from Africa
Accompanying ragas from Nepal.
A never-ending performance of musicians
From all over the world.
Bollywood dancing workshops at Lörrach,
Slam poetry at Freiburg’s Atlantic inn.
A didgeridoo accompaning Japanese drums
At the Zeltmusik festival.
Tabla and tanpura involved in a musical dialogue,
With trumpet and saxaphone,
Argentinian tango and Carribian salsa,
Fiery Flamenco dancers swirling proudly
With classical Bharta Natyam dancers,
Mani Rimdu masked-dancers accompanied
By a Tibetan monastery orchestra,
Mingling with shrill Swiss piccolo flute tunes
And masked drummers.
As I walk past the Café Bueb, the Metzgerei,
The St. Blasius church bells begin to chime.
I see Annette’s tiny garden with red, yellow and white tulips,
‘Hallochen!’ she says with a broad, blonde smile,
Her slender cat stretches itself,
Emits a miao and goes by.
I walk on and admire Frau Bender’s cherry-blossom tree,
Her pensioned husband nods back at me.
And in the distance, a view of the Black Forest,
With whispering wind-rotors,
And the trees in the vicinity,
Full of birds
Coming home to roost.
*****
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer, lecturer and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes, and writes regularly for The American Chronicle (www.Amchron.com), and is a contributing writer on www.boloji.com and also Blog.ch. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize. He is a lecturer in Basle (Switzerland).
