sharing what we had, the bitter but also
the sweet of our exile, the freedom. Her lips
quivered when I, as years before in trying to hold a girl,
said the wrong thing from sheer excitement,
but without reflection she would fling her answer
down, and there really was a girl before me. Every morning at
her desk,
sorting letters, she would speak with her
dead master; whoever came in met a
gaze of such expectancy that even the lowliest
did their utmost not to disappoint her. In the evenings
she enjoyed her meal when friends from all over
came, and she found a home in three languages. But which of us
leaning
forward right in the middle of the conversation
can still recite poems like that, German poems,
word for word.... You bore the burden of your past, Hannah,
nothing was lost.
