Today, when it comes to understanding natural disasters, we have no room for interpretation.

Even if there are still contemporaries who question the widely accepted thesis of man-made climate change, it is undisputed that we explain the devastating flood disasters that hit the previously lovely Ahr valley in the northern Eifel a year ago , on which the analytical instruments of modern natural sciences depend.

Only in cultural-historical retrospect is there room for the thought that the powerful forces that unleash the winds, cause the water to swell and the mountains to spit fire were once seen as gods that inspired fear and terror, but also awe in people.

This was especially true of the great rivers that could bring fertility to the land, but could also devastate it:

In the third of TS Eliot's “Four Quartets”, the American poet recalls the Mississippi of his childhood, whose immense masses of water impressed him so deeply that the river seemed like a god to him.

"I know little about gods," the poem begins, "but I think the river / Is a strong brown god - willful, untamed, irrepressible".

First accepted as a limit, in the course of civilisation, the river is only a problem for bridge builders and is gradually being forgotten - "remains implacable, / preserves its times and fits of rage, destroyer, reminder / of what people are too fond of forgotten.” No one would have thought that a 53-mile tributary of the Rhine could swell into a similar monster over the course of a summer night, and when it happened, no one had

It started with the meteorologists, who were able to express the strength of the tide with their measurements, but not the experiences of the people, it continued with the "wordings" of the politicians and the enumerations of the reporters ("cars, televisions, refrigerators in the river”) to the moving, but mostly helpless, statements of local residents who could say what was being taken from them and at what time, but ultimately not who it was that was doing it to them.

The familiar name of their river, derived from the Celtic word "aha" for water, was no longer sufficient.

The more reasonably we talk about the incomprehensible, the thinner our language becomes.

Loss of another paradise

It would not have taken much for me to become an eyewitness.

After all, the plan for the summer had been to finally show my daughter the areas on the Ahr that had so impressed me on day trips as a child.

The blooming wilderness of the Ahr loop near Altenahr, the rocks called Bunte Kuh near Walporzheim, the Saffenburg on the mountain spur above Rech, in the same village the stone bridge with the Nepomuk statue.

This is where the south began for me as a child, in this lovely, wildly romantic valley.

But because we changed our plans, we took note of what had happened from the news.

To react to this situation with a poem was a form of self-protection.

I didn't want to expose myself to the constant fire of the television images any longer and, as a counter-magic, brought up images as they came from the shafts of memory and imagination.

These verses do not attempt to indicate the incomprehensibility of the destruction, but rather the loss of another paradise, by staring at bare tree roots, by collecting scraps of conversation from a distant inn terrace.

As always, I wrote quickly in order to undermine rational control as much as possible, then the topicality spilled in with the word heating oil, and then I was amazed that I had caught a god, I don't usually work with such sizes.

Strange to me, he asserted himself as a placeholder for the incomprehensible.

But my support in this whirlpool was different,

The popular bridge saint, who hails from Prague, is not known for having been saved from floods, rather he was thrown into the Vltava because he was so steadfast in not betraying the secret of the confessional.

Useful people, these saints.

They stand as mediators between our modern understanding of nature and the past mythical worldview.

They can't do anything against such a tremendous flood, but they can be approached: you just know each other.

In the meantime, the community of Rech has decided to demolish the bridge that was badly damaged during the flood and to replace it with a new one.

The saint is to be taken to another place.

In my poem he remains where he has always been.