Were those really bats we saw
over the Hinterhof?
Or were they birds swirling
to show the evening off?

And was it really hemlock
Which grew around the lake?
Or was it an umbellifer,
Which it wouldn’t kill to take?

Was it really all that grey?
Were the streets at night so dark?
If Berlin was so morose,
Luke, I need not pine at all.

Yet German doctors wrote you roses
To combat your stress.
And then you had a tincture
Of flowers to ingest.

Doctors in Los Angeles
Leave flowers on the lawns;
Despair here lacks in pharmacy
Of a true medicine.