This Time, Yesterday

“This time, yesterday,” I tell a poor victim

“I dug in to a paper so soberingly old—”

Three glasses of whiskey and I was still on my feet (believe it)

“A real manuscript, torn and yellow round the edges,

Where rusted needles had probably crucified it for years,

Against the linoleum wall."

And you said,

Was this your grandfather's?

And warmly and impatiently I replied,

My love this I am yet to know.

Together we opened it and read:

“December 3, 1945. 

To-day an old woman said to me:

Young man, you must be assimilated

You must adjust, 

You must face youth with virtue.

And in that moment,

In me the soldier, fired up and red

Looked at her with slight remorse.

...

I felt a morsel of truth in her words

But I believe I was afraid to admit to

Who had won,

So today I will myself to be

A god-lover.”

❈❈❈❈❈

Out of the remorse and dried flower pots

From well-wishers of the war,

The soldiers and I thought

It could not matter, it is lilting—

But you see class-rooms

had become powerful enough

To descend on our young brains

Like falcons on leathery carcasses

Sifting through the walls, passages,

The hallways and corners of our minds,

Picking apart our perversions and essences

To clear the boulders, and show the light

While we lay, at the cuffs of ignorance

Our lips, as children

Were left to speak only of crucifixions

And public hangings

Spread apart to dry on muslin flatbeds

like chilies laid out in the sun

The very same parchments, we witnessed

Turning from yellow

To red