This poem is taken from PN Review 202, Volume 38 Number 2, November - December 2011.
Heinz Gropsmeyer
Almost forty years and your name still moves,
shrapnel under the skin, on reflective days.
You were not much older then than in the Wehrmacht
photograph above your name, twenty to my twenty-two.
Your canvas pack told more of you - Kölnisswasser,
talcum, Rotbart blades - though you had not lain
long enough to grow death's beard. More the lad
down someone's street than hated Hun or Boche
...
shrapnel under the skin, on reflective days.
You were not much older then than in the Wehrmacht
photograph above your name, twenty to my twenty-two.
Your canvas pack told more of you - Kölnisswasser,
talcum, Rotbart blades - though you had not lain
long enough to grow death's beard. More the lad
down someone's street than hated Hun or Boche
...
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