In 1936, a child
in Hitler’s Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
on a wind-up gramophone,
Franco a hero’s face in the paper.
No one told me about a poet
for whose sake I might have learned Spanish
bleeding to death on a barren hill.
All I knew of Spain
were those precious imported treats
we splurged on for Christmas.
I remember pulling the sections apart,
lining them up, sucking each one
slowly, so the red sweetness
would last and last —
while I was reading a poem
by a long-dead German poet
in which the woods stood safe
under the moon’s milky eye
and the white fog in the meadows
aspired to become lighter than air.
(Lisel Mueller)
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Based on Topics: War & Peace Poems, Christianity Poems, Literature Poems, Poets Poems, Poetry Poems, Heroism Poems, Christmas PoemsBased on Keywords: germany, lining, treats, long-dead, imported, sections, aspired, hitler, gramophone, tango, andalusia