page 59

Why should I,

I ask you, sitting here
years later listening to Couperin,
care enough about you to write your name?

I think of my mentor, Paul Hoffmann,
80 years old and an Austrian like you
walking barefoot through the snow in Vienna

and then, years of exile later, to Deutschland
to teach lyric poetry. So a romantic
like you but much braver.

I could only talk to the local Gauleiter
when I was younger,
the pig farmer Rautenkranz.

He still wanted
Lebensraum for his pigs, hated Slavs
despite his Drang nach Osten.

Now
I'm afraid of crowds,
and parades,

of mass action,
and sirens.
I suspect enthusiasm.

Everywhere I go
I take you with me,
you bastard.