The Coolest Thing I've Seen in a Really, Really Long Time

On Saturday evening, 100,000 poems fell on Berlin from the sky.

It was part of a project by a group Chilean artists, a "poetry rain" released by helicopter over various cities around the world that have been bombed in the past. Berlin's poetry rain was incorporated into this summer's Lange Nacht der Museen, or Long Museum Night, a twice-a-year art-and-concerts-and-events extravaganza that I love and attend almost every time.

At 7:30 pm, I met two friends at the Lustgarten, the grassy plaza in downtown Berlin that also serves as the focal point for the Lange Nacht der Museen. There were colorfully costumed stiltwalkers stalking about and a large, expectant crowd.

Right around 8:00 pm, a light appeared in the sky off to the east, behind city hall. A helicopter, growing steadily larger, coming in low. The crowd's eagerness increased and I noticed myself clasping my hands to my chest, hopping up and down as we peered at the sky, as excited as a little kid.

The helicopter flew right over us, huge, reached the far side of the square, then - released poems. Little fluttery scraps of white, bookmarks that twisted and turned and reflected the evening night as they drifted down, or were caught by the wind and carried in unpredictable directions. On the first pass, the wind took the bookmarks far from where we were, but the helicopter corrected its course on each subsequent pass - it made around 10, though I lost count after six - and finally, the poems started coming down where we could reach them.

Everyone had their hands outstretched, dashing back and forth as they tried to predict where the wind would take each bit of paper. Some were swept off in a last minute gust, some landed in the trees or on the roof of the cathedral, but some landed in our hands. Or directly at our feet. Or hit the unsuspecting on the head. It felt like Halloween from the sky, the anticipation, the fun, the calculations of where to position yourself to get a good haul. A few people were jerks, single-mindedly shoving each other out of the way, but most were friendly, laughing, making way for the children in the crowd.

It lasted half an hour, the excitement maintained through each subsequent pass of the helicopter - perhaps partly because even with 100,000 poems raining down on us, we only managed to catch a very few (I think the cathedral roof and the mysterious region across the road where the wind kept directing the poems took more than their fair share!) But when I went by late that night, after the rest of the Lange Nacht, I found a few more lurking on the cathedral steps, to round out a little collection. Each poem is in Spanish as well as German.