I
So, Grandfather, this is your birthplace and the season,
the beginning of summer in the land of the Hun
I come in the middle of life, seeking your soul and mine
In old age, you simply smoked and smiled,
said nothing more to me than, “Villy!”
I have heard the stories of how Kaiser Bill marched
his soldiers across the mountains to claim your fields
I have heard how you stabled your ox and mule
on the mud floor of your drafty house to keep them alive
I have heard of your voyage hidden in the hold
of the rolling ship, of the vomiting, the thin soup,
the thief who left you near penniless only hours
before you docked in the new country
I have heard the story of your cousin John,
cut in half by a train in the stockyards of Kansas City,
how the men immersed his torso in a tub of ice and argued
politics until his eyes rolled sideways into his head
I have heard about the bread wagon you drove
house to house through the immigrant neighborhoods,
how the horse left his puddles steaming in the streets,
how the women cursed you when you ran out of bread
I have heard how the Irish grocer fed you laxative gum
as a joke, how you messed your pants at the dinner table,
how your children laughed you into a two day drunk
I have heard how grandmother hid under your bed when
the black man knocked on your door to deliver a load of coal
Grandfather, I only knew you when you had no teeth
But now I know you brought your revolution with you
II
Grandfather, since my first memory, I have been at war
When a hand reached down out of the sky,
lifted and dropped me into a real war,
I crawled on the jungle floor with my wrath, and right away,
I waged a war against war and the makers of war
I brought the war back with me and fought the peace
because you had drawn the battle lines long before
I knew anything about your ancient wars and warmongers
All I could say to the mothers of the dead was,
“Stand aside, I am one of those who lived”
But my war against war led me from one struggle to another
Whom did I struggle against, for what and why?
Was I fighting your war again and on what battleground?
Grandfather, I keep hearing there will be no more wars,
at least not for a generation, not until new skin
replaces old, not until rain washes blood from stone
But I keep firing into the darkness, my chin on the stock
My war against the world has just begun
Some say I am only shooting myself in the boot
I feel I am shooting myself in the heart
III
Grandfather, when I dream, I dream of windstorms,
the sudden swift scattering of leaf, brick and bone
Your son, my father, came spinning into your adopted land
protesting, fists doubled, his night howls so piercing
your neighbors turned on their lights
I never knew when his words or broad sided blows
would drop out of nowhere to strike me down
He scattered his children and his days and his convictions
so wildly, I was almost forty odd before I hit the ground
I tumbled through battered evenings and car wrecks
and mornings at school when my stomach twisted in fear
I waited for Kaiser Bill to come and burn down my house
I could feel his soldiers outside my door, the assassins,
probing the perimeter, testing for a weakness
Even now, I fortify myself against disaster
Grandfather, no one really knows when the next storm
rolls down from the hills, when the next army strikes
Even now, I can’t sit still long enough to watch a sunset
IV
Grandfather, I wake early now and go walking
I search for that moment when the light first appears
I walk in those seconds of first light knowing the peace
that rises up from the scent of the earth,
the peace no man can steal
Some mornings the valleys swallow me in fog
Not until I reappear on the crest of the last hill,
not until I move up into the glow of the full light of dawn
do I know for certain that I have not disappeared forever
On one of those mornings, lost in the fog,
I climbed by chance into the swirl of a thunderstorm
At first, I panicked in the lightning and raw rain,
dodging the slimy bolts of cloud water
Halfway into the core of the storm I might have outran it,
but I turned back into it instead, leaping and laughing,
until I wondered why I had battled the sky for so long
Grandfather, on the morning I made peace with the rain,
I laughed and cried at the smallest of things
V
Grandfather, even as the tourist bus curves through the mountain
and brakes downward into your village,
I begin to learn about the anger of the dispossessed
In your country the spruces spring up into the thin air
in patterns of majestic lace, the patterns of my dreams
Waterfalls spill from the sides of the steep green hills
into rivers and streams that tumble into ghostly lakes
Wild boar crash the underbrush as did the unicorn
in the great, deep forests of our ancestral myths
I see the old men with their walking sticks along the road
And I know this is where you were meant to be, why
you sat tightlipped and fuming for sixty-five years
in a cheap wooden bungalow in someone else’s country
Your birthright and your heritage have disappeared
in the sediment of too many campaigns, too many winters
Seeing the cattle on the hillsides and the upright grain,
I know how you felt looking out at the river churning
under the bridge in the middle of your village
Standing here in the immense valley, you saw
what the river was, that it could both bring and take away
You saw that the river takes away a little at a time
And in time it would take away a little of you too
I feel the sadness you felt then
I feel the anger that imprisoned your words
At that age, your mustache as fine as newly sprouted grass,
you wore your lederhosen stiff and strong against your legs
Your new wife stayed home with her mother,
lonely and crying because you couldn’t feed her
You looked up at the mountains for the army of occupation
You vowed never, never to be enslaved
Grandfather, I know a little now about what has been lost
I stand where you stood
I stand by the terrible, rushing river
— Austria, 1989