Steps
All boot and jodhpur,
sheen
and perpendiculars,
drifting
toward the
five-year-old girl,
crouched
in a corner,
ghetto-seized,
jew-eyed . . .
"Why
are you crying?" he asks.
"Do
you know
I have a girl your age?" Then
the incredible:
she flings her arms around him
kisses
him, wildly.
A crack in the distance between them
pries
open,
her
cheek pressed against his pin:
two tiny snakes lying side
by side.
Did they feel it, she wonders
sixty
years later–
the
children who held gloved hands
as
they were led away–
or did they too find comfort
in
the sound of the Aryan angel’s
gold-leafed wings teasing
apart,
the melody
of
unpracticed departure?
"I can’t understand it,"
says my mother
tracing
six decades
along
a narrow cobblestone street,
but coming no closer. |
