Читать книгу You Teach Me Light - Melaney Poli - Страница 13

for Ruth Valerio

She ran away with another man, he said.

He took to gardening every weekend,

his allotment a little island of sanity

at the edge of Berlin. He rebuffed

well-meaning friends, wanted to tend

his cabbages undisturbed. Each week

he took a basket and a different book

to picnic in the Rosenkohl. After a few years

there were only potatoes to till, but it was still

his oasis from the terror of war or grief,

a place to bring the solace of black market

Lachs, French wine, the baker’s last loaf,

fifty square meters he could call the future.

Around him the world spun out of control.

He used Mark notes to stuff the cracks in the shed,

brought blankets and rags, mementoes, a rug.

When the Allies came, he opened the door

and led her, thin and pale and well read,

in the circle of his arms in the sunlight.

Every night was Passover, she said.