In this bone-haunted wood
the trees remember what no film can conjure,
Cruelties and casualties
Bullets lodged in heartwood, festering, remembering
The holes have closed
But the memories, the haunted stones filled with
the names triplets of crosses for fallen
Deutscher from Memel, an eerie reminder of the
names the faces the families and how many
Kohlers and Roths and Bergers killed or
waited in cellars when the armies
came my friend's grandmother had
a Jewish name and a cousin in the SS that's why
she was okay she met her husband a Luftwaffe airman
during the war but another Götting met his death in a Soviet-converted
concentration camp in East Germany in 1953; my friend Misha's
Deduska was one of 20 million from the Mother Country
killed in the highly mismanaged and brutal Great Patriotic
war; down the street the base where the French put in by
League of Nations mandate were kicked out by
the locals the local
assembly later voted all but two votes
to join the Third Reich (pragmatic or ideology) who knows
what Russians and Jews were shot in the
woods the base became a place for
Soviet Tanks changed name Klaipeda
(now University) did they go to Hungary in '56 or
Prague in '68? The place was a German U-boat
base between the nude beach and the
dolphinarium, the cruise ship at port and the pizza place.
The bus of Poles coming did they
drive past Auschwitz? Katyn?
Will they forget? (They conquered Vilnius in the 20s)
My brother was born outside Tokyo
A girl I had hoped to marry was from Dresden
both were firebombed
I stood on the ground at Hiroshima
my father lived near Nagasaki
And 2 million Indians died in that same war how many
Gujarati like my roommate?
My Great-Uncle John lived in a beautiful house with a cupola
near the beach in Orange County and flew in the South Pacific with the
Marines I used to write lists on the ration
paper notebooks that belonged to my great-
grandfathers but my other great-grandmother was the type
who got what she wanted despite the rations
Did the Metelaks in Bohemia turn in their neighbors?
were they themselves sold out in the Sudentenland?
Did they profit from war materiel?
Did they fight as partisans?
This nation, Lithuania, lost 14% of its people,
so did Russia, where I spend the last
week
There is a Soviet memorial to the war
On the other side of town
Russianized Lithuanian names on a stone wall
under a hanging sword and Russians as well
There is so little blood on the land in
America that we remember sacrifices in
Tenochitlán the trail of tears ending in
my state my boyhood home a
cantonment for Andrew Jackson
(on an 1814 trip or on the way to fight the Seminoles?)
And out in the SoCal fields where
my brother and I played the Mexicans
fought Estadounidenses for their homes
And how many Woods and Paines
were Tories or Abolitionists
My ancestors mostly missed the Civil War
Busy in Europe hoping dreaming
of another place without the wars
with opportunities
The girl who house-sat for us here
and I as well plan to live
down the street from the UN
Is there hope for us yet? Or just
more Iraq Afghanistan my Uncle
with shrapnel in his leg and PTSD
My father was a cold war linguist,
My English teacher lost her husband
while he was flying training in
desert sand
Were there Kerrigans in the IRA?
Or perhaps they left with the
potato famine and what were the
Woods and Paynes saying then
about Mcs I was raised singing "From the halls of
Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli" now I hope to live in
Mexico City where a girl with autism
Changed my life and taught me a song.
I cannot help but wonder that if the
Russians, Lithuanians, Poles, and
Americans here at this school can learn to
love one another (and if yes why not the world?)
Or if they will learn to kill again.
Some Poles said after the war that
at least the Nazis had solved their "Jewish
Problem" the Czechs purged their party and
Lithuania by and large went along with the Holocaust
But there was a disobedient Japanese ambassador in Vilnius who didn't
And Oskar Schindler's List, is that enough?
We take our bikes down to the beach past pine needle beds,
70 year old trenches and gun emplacements
but I don't flinch when I hear big guns
they shook the windows of my house where I grew up,
but we were safe some Afghan family
was not so lucky.
How long does it go on?
How can we keep from doing this again?
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