DOWN from those bluff crests breeding the Ohio
one can take plank stairs, or a rickety incline;
with much the same plunge deepened and turned west,

over the Zürchersee the Dolder drops you
along a footpath or cog tram. But Mummelsee
strands you above its bowl, without wings.

Inching down, sun ahead for guide, I felt
how fighters keep only enough of themselves
to slice against the thrust or ebb of their chances.

How for them the future of memory
is no wider than sun-glint on their metal,
a rolling weld, so that their failed attempts

to reconstruct loved faces do not stop them.
That takes something unforeseen, the abrupt
cul de sac, trip wire, operative impasse.

An untried man told me he came to Mummelsee
...