Grandfather, I come in the middle of life
to your birthplace in the land of the Hun
Even as the bus curves through the mountains,
brakes downward towards your village
and crosses the bridge over the twisting river,
I begin to feel the anger of the dispossessed
I have heard how you stabled your ox and mule
on the mud floor of your drafty house,
how Kaiser Bill marched his soldiers
over the hills to claim your fields,
how you refused to be his conscript and fled
to the Statue of Liberty, how you fed
your young family driving a tea wagon,
how the men outside the tavern in your new home
mocked you for your poor and halting English,
laughed you into a two-day drunk
At 84, you simply smoked and smiled
and said nothing more to me than “grandson”
Grandfather, I only knew you when I was a child
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,
waging a war against war and the makers of war
I brought the war back with me and fought for the peace
because you had drawn the battle lines long before
I knew anything about your own warmongers
All I could say to the mothers of the dead was,
“I am sorry – I am one of those who lived”
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
I keep firing into the darkness, my chin on the stock125
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 broadsides
would sweep 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, mornings at school when
my stomach sank in fear, my thoughts battered by terror
I waited for Kaiser Bill to come and burn 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 knows when the next storm will
thunder down from the hills, when the next army will strike
IV
Grandfather, I wake early 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 from the scent of the earth, 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 a fog,
I climbed by chance into the swirl of a thunderstorm
I panicked in the lightning and raw rain
Halfway into the core of the storm I might have outrun it,
but I turned into it, 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 things126
V
Grandfather, in your country the spruces spring into the 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 disappear into ghostly lakes
Wild boars trample the underbrush as did the unicorn
in the great, deep forests of my 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 those many years
in a cheap wooden bungalow in someone else’s country
Your birthright and your heritage have been erased
by too many wars, too many winters
Seeing the cattle on the hillsides and the upright grain,
I feel as you felt looking out at the river churning
under the bridge in the middle of your village
Standing here in this immense valley, you saw
what the river was, that it could both bring
and carry away a part of you dream by dream
I see you in your youth, mustache as fine as newly
sprouted grass, your lederhosen stiff against your legs,
how you looked up at the mountains for the army
of occupation to fire their cannons at those you loved
I feel the anger and sadness you felt then, your vow
never to be enslaved, to live and speak as a free man
Grandfather, I know a little about what has been lost
I stand where you stood; I stand by a terrible rushing river