Durs Grünbein was conceived two months after the Berlin Wall was built, in the cold winter of 1961. He spent half his life behind the wall, or, as he prefers to put it: “I spent one life as a hostage and another life free.”

Last week, the barrier that once divided Berlin, Germany and the world quietly passed an equinox of German unity. The wall was gone for as long as it stood: 28 years, 2 months and 26 days.

Roughly one generation lived with the wall. Roughly one generation has now lived without it. There is poetry in that symmetry, Mr. Grünbein says. A poet himself, he has written about being one of the first East Berliners to cross into the West.