cigarette

I had just finished the coffee,
(it was heavy black and colombian)
and I saw the steely blue stillness of the sky
and thought, "I'll have a cigarette"
and did just that.
barefooted,
in a loose black linen shirt.
I felt like some ancient maharishi
lost in the autumn of a foreign land.
the treeline starved by the cold.
I scratched three matches illuminated
caught it slightly before the impish wind extinguished them.
the window nearest was black
nearly opaque,
it mirrored the whole of my figure
and I stood
bearded,
the smoke coming in great billows
from between my cracked and bleeding lips,
like the very gate of the akeldama
black eyes and thick hair.
as I saw myself now
I wondered what had been seen
in this confused child of a man.
I wondered
how a man I could ever be called,
and I wondered why
I had believed them
when I alone
knew how truly childish
I truly was.

nachkriegszeit

the lean and tall grasses
shifted in the late october wind.
it whistled past the curling vines
and the wheat stalks
that had sprung
over the bones of serfs,
long tempered on
carcassone soil.
roger emerged from dull light of the kitchen
into the brisk white noon.
assam tea, here.
it was black as night.
I should believe your arrival
especially serendipitous
in light of the circumstances.
the circumstances being,
in roger's case
the communicae from berlin
and his recent discharge.
serendipitous, or lucky.
they call it heureux hasard here.
we seated ourselves in no.14 chairs on the veranda.
the gramophone on the table sat idly
with roger's service cap mounted upon it.
how was paris?
it was. didn't you see it
in the war?
not the way it is now.
no,
no I suppose not.
if there was anything to see
then the germans took it when they left.
there wasn't much in berlin,
roger said. only skeletons.
the same in paris.
all the partisans had suicided
the only ones left
were the ones fat enough not to starve.
tell me roger
if all our brightest died fighting
then who will be left
to carry the fire?
the lights are dim over europe,
some, in remembrance
others still in fear.
is that why you left paris?
because its lights were too dim?
because you were not bright enough
to see in the dark?
I left
because I saw nothing had changed.
six months passed,
like so many storms
the trains of france
ran on time.
the evenings consumed
with the bitter anomie
that autumn brought:
solace in cards
the dark and smoky nightclubs of pigalle place,
the stoicism so eagerly embraced
became a badge
to dejected friends
who saw the descent
and pondered the violence.
the letters and stipends that no longer arrived,
the montmartre apartment
piled high with old newspapers
bach records, cigarette stubs
savile row suits stained and frayed
a typewriter pawned for a train ticket
where sunshine would cure me of my needs.
the sun hangs over the pyrenees.
in spain, lorca lies in a shallow grave
a decade too early
for heroism.
in poland
the war goes on unheard.
the war.
she went back to the war.
standing over the Seine in the rain
the wind catches the tails of the gray coat like a whip.
the train returns to the mother
who wears an iron veil,
go back to the war,
and I won't follow.

machine gun