1 New Poem

After the Midnight Caper

When they told me,
“this was the dagger
as we pulled it out,
no more from the thrift
store bin or through handle
markings could it be yours”,

I paused, taking in marble
columns, stained doors
from rain and the tentacle
of tracing wind in overhead
wires. I struggled to

Recall what was your
face without the wear of years

Without the misery of the world
tucked between two panes of glass.

I could have said you were
like a Sichuan peasant planting
by lantern light in ’56,

An apparition haunting
Wall spaces in ’89:

Something that held principle,
had faded, was torn,
to be sold on dorm room

posters in fifty years’ time;

I just said I never
knew your heat, left it

there.

. . .

But I wondered (silent),
if you still lived Munich,
at the lab with your
beakers and buttons, pencils and pinpricks,

You’d gladly have burned down
to dance amongst ashes,
breathe in the still smoke,

if the wall markings made an effigy of

us.