Two brothers, Ad and Rude olf
Dassler. Best götzendämmerung
training shoes in the whole
of the Teutoberg Forest, as worn
by Owens and Luz – oh, the brown
and the yellow ale! Hide Hickler!
de Nazification, de fraternization,
de rise of FIFA and de IOC.
Canaan able, Puma, La Marque
Aux 3 Bandes. King – Pele, Cruyff,
Maradona. Copas – Franz, Michel,
Zizou. In a twist of fate, the estranged
brüders were reunited in death,
crashing head-on in their near-identical
custom bugs at the Oberammergau
Oktoberfest, 19 hundred and 80.
Adi on John’s, Rudi on Sam’s,
blood alcohol durch das dach.
They were buried at sea off Danzig,
where their skulls were sucked
by European eels, which had entered
the Baltic some years previously,
having journeyed from Sargasso,
where their sire was a bootlace
from Ulle on the Wharfe, two miles
downstream from the factories
that cooked the suds that killed them.
[The eels were killed and served
with spätzle to their beautiful,
virgin daughters, putting them
die Ente hoch. In six, or nine,
or eighteen months, each one
gave birth to a nameless thing
the peasants demanded be sealed
in das stattliches wohnhaus walls.
Where they remain to this day,
crawling through the cracks
in the crumbling mortar to tongue
the tingling air, brooding
on their inheritance.]
Note: John Smith and Samuel Smith’s breweries are located on the River Wharfe in Tadcaster, two miles upstream from the former eel fishery of Ulleskelf. The National Socialist brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler founded the sportswear firms Adidas and Puma. This poem is taken from the sequence /ˌiːlʌɪ/, the poems of which are rooted in the European eel.
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