The Official Biography of Wilhelm Besund Köln (1936-2003)
By Elliot C. Mason
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rap pa-da hup hoo
hap ba-da hey!
[good, good. keep that up.]
rap pa-da hup hoo
hop hop baweeeey!
he was a wa
a wa
a watchmaker
and he lived on Empire Road
he had a daughter who lived
in the city
and a cat who climbed
on the stove
bap a-da hup hup
bap ba da hey!
badashakadasapirey!
he sat in a train station
once
and shivered in
the rain
his mother kept a notebook
with drawings of
a face – Wilhelm
never knew
(he longed! to know he longed!)
to whom the face
belonged
ap-sap happa – shakadap
rapey!
the following announcement
details (in no particular
order) various scenes
in the life of Wilhelm
Besund Köln from the Free
City of Danzig, who met
Günter Graß when he
was twenty-three
ha
sa
pa pa
sap-hap-baparap- sapap…ap…ap
bapada hey!
he had a fear
of vomiting
(of vomi-vomi-
vomiting) so he tended
not to drink a thing
bap
hap
sap
ka-ka-ka
dap!
once he sat
for hours and hours
watching his wife dance
in the sun in the garden
it gave him
needles and pins
(it goes without saying
Christ died for his sins)
he had a friend
(hey! hap! sakakakakaka - - -)
who worked in
a brick factory,
of Polish origin
to Wilhelm’s German
that friend
once sold a carton
of Lucky Strikes to
Günter Graß for half
the price it should be –
they loved him and
they were from
the same city,
you see
saaaaaa
bam bap bama
bam sup kanurama
Wilhelm died
before Graß but
for years he had been
planning to buy his
older hero a red and yellow
drum and place it
on his tomb but
Wilhelm Köln (who
lost two brothers and
a generation in the war)
died too soon
Wilhelm (who always preferred
to be called by
his first name) met his wife when
on a bus to Berlin
he saw her reading
the chapter “Faith
Hope and Love” in
the First Book of that
marvel, marvel, marvel
(kapoo sabadu subadu sobado)
the Tin Drum by
Günter Graß and Wilhelm
said “oh ha-ha that’s
the best chapter
of any book ever
written” and she (requiescat in
pace, Sarai Korp Köln,
née Romero) said “well
you’ve obviously never
read the Song
of Solomon” and they laughed
with such fervour
that they simply had
to spend the rest
of their lives together
cosh cush kara
kosh kash cana
coshshshsh coshshshshsh
sh sh sh
bop rataaaaaa!
Wilhelm (they called him
Professor Sparks because
of the white hair
that looked like electricity)
got a junior professorship
at the University
of Dresden after giving up
on watches and getting
his PhD
he had only gone in
to the trade of
time because his father
wanted to find eternity
in his son, so once
his father’s heart
stopped ticking
Wilhelm was free
ka bala
hup haa
ka bala
soop da
ka bala (ka bala)
ka balabala hupka
hupka
bala!
at university he proposed
a theory for the autonomy
of East Germany and
the inevitability of
its collapse
into capitalism (it is
probable that his hero
Günter Graß heard about
the theory and read
the paper when it was published
in the transcripts of
the Moscow Peace
Conference of 1982) and
the government eventually
dismissed the theory
although they couldn’t
decide if he was
an optimist or
a traitor (he told Sarai
his wife in response
that he was neither
in fact he was
more of a song
and dance man and then
he sang the Monty Python
Lumberjack Song and
she laughed so much
that she fell backwards onto
a suitcase)
he hap
heeee hap
sh sh sh
koooop!
his cat was called
Adolfo after the first
Prime Minister of
Spain
haaaaa hapa hapa
hap clap
sopaw!
his daughter was
a doctor who lived
in the city and when
she heard her father
was ill she drove out
to Pirna close to
Dresden where Wilhelm
and Sarai had moved
and she tried to
cure him but there
was nothing she could do
he died of pancreatic
cancer, aged sixty-six,
about fifteen minutes
before his birthday.
three weeks after
the funeral, Sarai
died in bed
holding the empty
space across
the silence of
the sheets.
(then twelve years later
Günter Graß, who had met
Wilhelm at a bar in
Danzig in 1959 and possibly
read his theory of East
Germany’s
consumption
by neoliberal greed,
died of a lung
infection at a very
old age.)
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