"Hitler, c'est moi."
Glucksmann
Something had turned me back. Broken stone. Ochre and lime
Leaves in the pockmark of a mortarsplash. I paused
To marvel at the chaos that composed them
Impasted in hoarfrost like sperms or dead souls frozen
In the liquid oxygen of time. Then back again
To the smoothness on a mosque's threshhold, a revenant
Drifting on in the first flurries of Friday afternoon,
Windless and lightweight, sifting down in grey silence,
I walked on past shawled faces in an old Yugoslav cafe,
Bread smells and a glimpse of loaves, jars stacked pyramidal
As in Russia, crossing Habsburg tramlines to the market stalls
Where legs and shoe leather move round the small splash
That, invisible, unsought, I wince at. Walnuts, cabbages, tangerines:
Onions, apples, peppers, honeycomb: bowls of cheese, sunflower seeds:
Beautiful, spartan Arcimboldo, where Sarajevo snow is falling, falling . . .
Is ash falling into the next century.