Bavaria, 1946 <br /> <br /> <br />The clairvoyante, a major general’s wife, <br />The secretaries’ sibyl, read the letters <br />They brought her from their GI soldier-lovers, <br />Interpreting the script. I went along <br />One afternoon with writing of my own. <br />“This writing is by one you cannot trust,” <br />She frowned, and all the secretaries smiled. <br />But when she took my palm, she read the brown <br />Fingers for too much smoking and the lines <br />Of time and fate for a long and famous life. <br />“Soon you will take a trip by land and sea.” <br />Across the hall, her husband, half asleep <br />And propped high on his pillows, when I bent <br />To shake his hand, seeing my uniform, <br />Called in a whisper as if he still dreamed, <br />“I told him not to go to Russia!” Then, <br />Remembering the woman at my jeep, <br />Among the smoking tanks and half-tracks, crying, <br />“My husband fell in Russia!” I thought I saw <br />For him the summer uniforms in snow, <br />Partisans, savage reprisals, day-long strafing, <br />Long lines of prisoners never to return, <br />Comrades armless, legless, and blind. But he, <br />Clutching my sleeve to pull me closer, whispered, <br />“It was the SS did it, not my men. <br />The week before the armistice, they took <br />Three just-conscripted boys who were afraid <br />And hanged them, German children, the sky green <br />Above the uniforms too big for them, <br />As we saw when we found and cut them down. <br />It was then that I despaired to live or die.” <br />The secretaries waiting with their coats on, <br />She thanked me for my visit, and, “Next week <br />Bring cigarettes and coffee, please,” she said.<br /><br />Edgar Bowers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/clear-seeing/
