HERE WE ARE,1944

Here we are in 1944
on picnic grounds
picking up
blue Stars of Bethlehem
as poet drinking
by the fountains
making my bicycle stops
with secret code drops
to aid the Allies
on a city garden
somewhere in Prague
holding onto a dog
watching returning
soldiers jamming
with chops as drums
filling some of their mouths
with left-over pomegranates
on earth between mountains
with a sea of postcards
eyeing a crow's nest
a flock of trained birds
and a hawk as our guest
who exchange messages
in every dust up
to win the war and guard
us by a cave's shade
in our sun glassed vision
near the whitened birches
with Chopin still
playing in Warsaw
and the last little
Yiddish paper
unsold even
for a half a zlota
in the last ghetto
reserved for torture
and for the slaughter,
you had a zero hour
to leave
your hospital ship
of wounded soldiers
yet you hold onto shells
with once deadly information
in a loss for Germany
the merciless fascist enemy
stationed by the ocean
in a prison camp
tattooed by curved
Spanish roses
and butterflies disclosed
once in motioning the parade
of the Abe Lincoln brigade
and a sailor's brush stroke
from a Jewish refugee
tailor from the old country
with snowflakes seen
on his Polish gabardine coat
of many colors now faded
on his sleeves
who soundly labored
in the coal mines
of a Southern Siberia bog
searching without Pravda
for the truth
with a case of diphtheria
and an ear infection
who quotes from Gogol
and " Notes
from the Underground"
takes his late leave
with a single suitcase
walking by dogwood
and hyacinth
in the ninth labyrinth
harried on exiled days
wanting to dance
a hora
hosting a strange person
an informer
in the form a Golem
trying to ignore the horror
of the war
like a dolphin spy
making its way
trying to keep warm
from the past night snow
seeking an open sky light
draping himself in sackcloth
and ashes in a sandstorm
over the Mediterranean
going to Jerusalem.