I’ll take a stroll
through wintry night air
to free my mind
from its dark wisps and snares.
While walking in the night’s leaden fog
that weighs upon both eyes and mind,
a building emerges from dampening slog
adorned with columns of marble refined.
The fog oppresses all the known world,
with eyes and ears slammed shut by fear.
Its thralls have spread, its pall unfurled
to wring out all sense of what was clear.
And yet: Here rises
from black fog’s embrace
the lights of a campus
that spite fog’s dimming wastes.
Upon building’s brow, above the main gate,
two words inscribed. Letters gleam through gloom
and icy tendrils of iron mist’s weight:
“Auditorium Maximum” —
— the place of the greatest hearing.
If only this hall could vastly hold
the sum of all in fog a-fearing,
to teach each to hear and be thus consoled.
To live in more than piecemeal peace
in a heartily hearth-warmed hall
where all must learn the art of hearing,
to share in the greatest art of all.
Inspired by seeing the building as described and named in the poem while walking in a dark foggy night through the New Palace and University of Potsdam grounds in late December.
