Heidelberg 1963

I

It doesn't go to go back:

this lovely German city,

its river, castle and streets,

at every turn expecting

a face from seventeen years

back. For what, seventeen years?

How could I see more clearly

whom now I see more clearly

than she ever lived. Ilse.

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I was a young

conqueror then-too young

to have killed my way here, so traded

indelible guilt for a gentler, vicarious one;

but an officer nonetheless, conscious, elect; I'd made it;

and wasted no time

discarding innocence: first time

not knowing even where it was, although

an old hand soon, a collector, each day a conquest;

-for so I thought of it then in the arithmetic of ego.

(But a virgin still

to love, encumbered still

by an image-holy, untouchable-for love

was another thing (no German word for it)

it would take a murderous marriage four years to disprove.)

Ilse, not you:

we were not lovers, although you

later came back, an Ilse in the mind,

-blue eyes bulging on my staircase, back bent back-

blonde ghost of a loss too complex to be defined.

You had your own

arrangement and your own

queer mathematics: no survival

but in dignity, which you cut to your own terms:

better to be kept in style than not be kept at all.

Familiar, chiding me

for lack of taste: dear me,

this one's a peasant, you must find another.

When you gave me your missing husband's Wehrmacht

gloves

you kissed my cheek and said, That for my little brother.

Our last long talk

by these castle ramparts, your talk

-the letter received from your husband, not

dead as reported, but a Russian prisoner, home

in a few months. And what can I do, dear? Please, what?

-not wanting him,

the five years without him

thorough, decisive, your clean adjustment

no longer new; you new, your own woman.

You fingered the crumpled letter like a piece of ancient

parchment.

The sun drove down

the river, we drove down

Dantestrasse submerged in blue

subaqueous shadow. When we said good-bye, this time

you did not say "dear." You said, I don't know what T'Il do.

The final meeting

(the dream one) in a month meeting

on the stair-pLEASE, PLEASE, TO MANNHEIM, WE CAN STAY

THE NIGHT-back arched on the bannister, eyes drugged,

distorted.

Ilse, you frightened me half to death. I ran away.

m

The city's changed, but not much. They've moved

the Bahnhof, the old railway tunnel

is for cars now (you take it up to the Schloss),

some new buildings on the edge of town;

the shops are full, as are the river-barges;

the honorable scars have disappeared.

It's the people have changed: the young girls, expensive, chic

(though no more than you in those lean years, Ilse).

They move to their own rhythms, confident, free,

and painfully private. I make my clumsy way

in the Hauptstrasse, an aging, lonesome satyr,

self-conscious, ignored; an old Kilroy come back.

I lecture the students. The two with whom I lunch

I fall in love with on the spot. Dissatisfied,

they hope to study in America. We chat,

I sympathize, expound, expand, I'm just

on the point of turning twenty, wondering if...

when one of them asks, "Is it true-what we hear about

Swedish girls?"

Iv

Ilse, I've looked for you because I want you.

Last time I ran away, which was just as well

(though I blamed myself a while for a stupid kid,

being still a stupid kid). We had nothing to give;

we didn't even understand the principle.

I think you survived, as I think I've survived.

I think if we found each other-by Christ, what a grand

Gargantuan tumble we'd have in our middle age.

This time we'd know what to do; and doing it,

we'd cry a golden bridge down seventeen years.

Well, it's almost time to leave. I think I'll take

a last long promenade down Dantestrasse.

(They heal there now, it's a regular pill-box row).

I know you won't be there. I'll try to remember

to remind myself that, after all, I am.