Poetry: Martin Edmunds

KRISTALLNACHT

Austria: our sugar-dusted Vienna, a Sachertort frosted
with glass. Berlin,
paved with brayed stars.

Blackout on
die Judengasse. Dawn.
The sun’s blood runs over stones.

A minyan of sorrows
weeps in the willows. Murder
broods under yews,

the cantor’s
last shekel
stuck in its craw.

We lived
like children. We had not known fire
could melt gold or eat bone.

November.
Month the raw-
throated raven wholly owns.