artwork: ralph murre
by Thomas J. Erickson
When
daybreak surprised us that morning
in
your hotel room, the Berlin
the
color of a healing bruise.
In
my pocket were the chips of mortar I had
scratched
out of the remnants of the Gestapo
headquarters. The mortar was turning
to
sand by the hour--free at last
to
disintegrate for all time.
I
asked you to think of all the people
who
had looked into that sky awaiting
the
knock of the Gestapo or the Stasi,
the
concussions of the Allied bombs,
or
the signal to escape from East to West.
We
were too drunk and happy, though,
to
confront the city and its past--safely
distanced,
as we were, from divorce
or
the second thoughts of the newly married.
It
was easy to look at the sky and write
our
histories on the window pane
before
passing into our Lethean sleep.
~
first published Mad Poets Review
