Berlin, 1944

Crumbling city:
flesh-taut skeletons shuffle silently
past niveous lake,
vain swans now
sullied bones on cracked plates.

Ruinous silence
salts her eyes: beautiful dogs,
gone the way of the swans – 
where are the missing dead?

They reside
in his eyes: his lupine touches
tamed, sullied by war, doubt;
equally devoured, she freezes.

 

 

Steve Isaak, sometimes published as Nikki Isaak and Chuck Lovepoe, is the author of several poetry anthologies. He is the editor of Reading & Writing By Pub Light, www.readingbypublight.blogspot.com.