A Unified Berlin

The Junior Minister waved a hand
                       toward the courtyard where, he said,

                                    Goering’s private lion used to live.

                       With him we climbed Parliament’s steps,

walls pockmarked still with bullet holes.
                       In the conference room the Social Democrats

                                    passed trays of petit fours and coffee.

                       We were perhaps insufficient, he said.

His voice, uninflected: they shipped
                       my father to Stalingrad. Forty days

                                    and dead. In the room,

                       the transcriptionist, the translator,

and security stationed against
                       the wall. Some time passed.

                                    In East Germany, he said, at least

                       it was always terrible. Bad luck, he said,

to be on that side of the wall. Even
                       the apples were poison. We were

                                    to understand this was a little joke.

                       He brought the teacup to his mouth,

but did not drink. His fingernails
                       were tapered and very clean.

                                    When you are the victim, he said,

it doesn’t matter who is killing you.

Credit

Copyright © 2019 by Ann Townsend. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“‘A Unified Berlin’ emerged from a Mellon Foundation-sponsored trip to Berlin and Nicosia, Cyprus, where a group of American writers and scholars explored two cities broken by war and other kinds of rupture. Our team met with politicians, artists, workers and activists and heard their stories. This is one man's story.”
—Ann Townsend