Notes from a Project to Construct a Replica of the Berlin Wall as an Art Installation at the Tate Modern

The artist says, "Though an edifice
of terror was torn down,
the barricades have been built anew
in our own backyards,
so this symbol of oppression
merely reconstructs the concept
without bricks or concrete."
Through a series of depictions
drawn from photographs, the grey
granular surface of suppression
is graven with grafitti, to form
a tattoed trope of fear
on dolmen no more solid than despair.
The suggestion of machine guns
beneath the murky light of London
manipulates the air of menace
already extant in minds driven tribal
by the North / South schism.
In new editions of the gallery guide book,
the border is depicted as a dotted line,
which divides the left and right
hemispheres of the brain.
Should you find yourself
on the wrong side of postmodern,
the curators will escort you
to a room full of Russian Impressionists,
where a gulag wrought in gouache
serves as a salt mine of imagination.
On leaving, you become a refugee
from a regime of ideas, never
out of sight of watchtowers,
with their spotlights
and their crosshaired view of life.