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Michael H. Levin: Poems and Prose
BORDERS
Crossing Checkpoint Charlie with my in-laws, 1982
Westfolk immune
pass through like seraphs,
accordion wire unseen.
They do not smell Drancy’s
latrines, oiled gunmetal
fear on the Umplatz.
Invisible to them
dark groups in woods
the sucking mud
of winter Polish forests
the drowned, grasping for visas
who rose from green cobbles
like nausea, when Vopos
stamping our passports
sniggered Just one real
American
and no voice
spoke from the whirlwind
and the burning bush
stayed silent.
First published in Watered Colors (2014)
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