Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border

<sup>By which a strip of land became a hole in time

            —Durs Grünbein</sup>

Grandfather I cannot find,

flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,

what country do you belong to:

where is your body buried,

where did your soul go

when the road led nowhere?

Grandfather I’ll never know,

the moment father last saw you

rips open a wormhole

that has no end: the hours

became years, the years

forever: and on the other side

lies a memory of a memory

or a dream of a dream of a dream

of another life, where what happened

never happened, what cannot come true

comes true: and neither erases

the other, or the other others,

world after world, to infinity—

If only I could cross the border

and find you there,

find you anywhere,

as if you could tell me who he is, or was, 

or might have become: 

no bloodshot eyes, or broken

bottles, or praying with cracked lips

because the past is past and was is not is—

Grandfather, stranger,

give me back my father—

or not back, not back, give me the father

I might have had:                                 

there, in the country that no longer exists,

on the other side of the war—