In 1936, a child <br />in Hitler's Germany, <br />what did I know about the war in Spain? <br />Andalusia was a tango <br />on a wind-up gramophone, <br />Franco a hero's face in the paper. <br />No one told me about a poet <br />for whose sake I might have learned Spanish <br />bleeding to death on a barren hill. <br />All I knew of Spain <br />were those precious imported treats <br />we splurged on for Christmas. <br />I remember pulling the sections apart, <br />lining them up, sucking each one <br />slowly, so the red sweetness <br />would last and last -- <br />while I was reading a poem <br />by a long-dead German poet <br />in which the woods stood safe <br />under the moon's milky eye <br />and the white fog in the meadows <br />aspired to become lighter than air.<br /><br />Lisel Mueller<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blood-oranges/
