It happened Fifty Years Ago

Rather than celebrating for our Friday Blog-Hop, I am going to recall something that sadly happened fifty years ago.

I had just returned home to Austria from my year in Moscow, and was on my way to get a job at the 1964 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck. The evening before I was to board a train there, we watched television at our favorite inn. The shock reverberated through our little village; as it did indeed throughout the world.

As this is the 50th Anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, I thought it would be appropriate to share my poem about JFK’s June 26, 1963 visit to Berlin. The ‘cursed’ Wall finally came down on November 11, 1989.

Peace: War’s Abandoned Grave

From its cachéd acorn womb

the seedling sprouts through pungent moss,

soon greened by a rambunctious spring’s exuberance.

The Westwind, taking pity, laughs and heaves

and trembles off the would-be devourer of tender leaves.

The sapling climbs toward the tranquil summer sky,

shading the meadow by the river,

until the Eastwind, cold and blustery,

defeats the balmy climes

and heralds in this city’s soon-to-come heart-breaking times.

Branches at half-mast, the tree holds silent vigil

against the rapings by lust-driven Ural-hordes.

Its meadow barren, flowers vanquished under iron treads,

the oak, denuded in the smoke-veiled morn’,

breathes acrid mist from the River Spree, forlorn.

 

Amber tears drip from the tree’s strafed bark

as the proud city, quartered by its raucous victors,

writhes in shredded ruin, a graveyard of the living dead.

A people torn apart, despaired,

as brother now must fear the brother whom war had spared.

A saw’s rasping bite takes hold;

the last tree topples at the cusp of dawn.

The oak’s green planks strain vainly toward freedom

from deep within the cursed Wall.

A fire-blackened church accuses, a grim reminder to them all.

The pendulum of time reverses.

Survivors hail their former foe.

To these living dead, abandoning their graves of war,

as if he were a citizen, but keener,

a young world leader avows peace with:

“Ich bin ein Berliner!”

* * *

From “Moments of the Heart, A Book of Poems and Short Prose”