David & Johanna

I met E at a bookstore in Hanau, Germany in 1960. She told me where to buy civilian clothes, and we fell into rhyme quickly:

JOHANNA IN A SERIOUS VEIN
JOHANNA IN A SERIOUS VEIN

Johanna in a serious vein
Is always at the edge
Of going insane.

Remembering British “Christmas Trees”
In Hanau in 1944,
A loaf of bread at three,
Her first rag doll when she was seventeen,

Fighting to stay alive
Or on top of it
When the sky split,
Huddling in the shelters
Of her parents’
False
Messiah.

I know her.
We struggle now together
In our four room flat.
She wanders Wednesdays to the City,
Takes a nap
On 41 D.

We met in a German bookstore in 1961.
I asked for Goethe
In English translation.

Called her SPERLING for sparrow.
In her self-imposed cage
She seemed broken.

Homely by her designation,
Radiant as that summer afternoon
By mine,
We had coffee and fell into rhyme
The coming week.

Blessed are the meek.
For I inherited her.
Her lot was not so kind, nor vast as mine might
Be.
She inherited me.

1976