Читать книгу You Teach Me Light - Melaney Poli - Страница 15

In order not to repeat history, it is not enough to know it,we must know ourselves, and our complicity.

—Schilling

Some days you have to take what you can get

and that day my mother was too sick

to find yet one more crowded pavement café

and the worst of it was, sitting there in

my habit, I had to see it all unfold: the tired

couple with their small child, the empty table

and the promise of refreshment, and then

the waiter descending in a blaze of jeers,

scathing looks and torrid gestures, and watch

the husband and wife gather their dignity

and leave, unwelcome only for the offense

of resembling too much the enemy du jour

and I had nowhere to go to, nowhere to

hide my shame, no means of protest when

the waiter returned and served us sweetly,

set the coffee before me, and the only way

I could ask is a veil any better than a chador?

was to say, simply, Dankeschön