CRETE - 1941 AND 1971

CRETE - 1941 AND 1971

by J. Zimmerman.

At the village entrance, the glass casket, full
of human bones, meets the traveler to Crete.
The moon gleams like a skull upon each skull.

Fishermen (fathers, husbands, or sons of these sorrowful
fragments) ferried to ships the Allies in retreat.
At the village entrance, the glass casket, full

of ghosts of women and children torn fearful
from cottages, remembers the Nazi military elite.
The moon gleams like a skull upon each skull,

upon slim bones from arms that once could lull
babies, and upon bones from babies feet.
At the village entrance, the glass casket, full

of thighbones, commemorates those too slow to haul
themselves into the hills. In the evening heat,
the moon gleams like a skull upon each skull.

Three decades later, German sailors, dull
to history, laugh together jostling on a seat
at the village entrance - the glass casket. Full
the moon gleams like a skull upon each skull.

Copyright © 2002-2008 by J. Zimmerman.