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Sport 41: 2013
1941
1941
Lindens outside my childhood
home are now much taller, hiding
the view of the barren valley below.
Barbed wire surrounds the section
where we played hide and seek, innocence
drained months ago
from the soil under the prisoners’ feet, cursing
under their soles. At night
I hear lindens crying for luna, for the summer
just gone, summer of omens,
while the thin twigs of arms and legs keep
breaking off
and landing in heaps, becoming compost
for the only thing that will ever
grow there—acres of loss.
Women are embracing killers, embracing
the dead. Women
are giving birth to cold blooded
murders, raising the offspring
on little more than a handful of bitter
forest berries and cornflour
wrapped in headscarves, smuggled past
the hungry guards
under the coat, under the blouse.
Food is kept close to the heart, like love
or a newborn, or words
which can no longer express, just ache,
night after night, like lindens crying for luna,
invisible
behind the autumn cloud.