Apfelstrudel
Beneath the perfect powdering of snow:
layer on pastry layer fine as flakes from skin,
petals from a rose. They're interleaved
with apple's cinnamonned moistness trickling
like honey from cells and a taste, a texture
never found in English imitations fills your mouth.
Tears well in your eyes as the years collapse:
you're seven and Mutti's at the kitchen table, leaning
over pallid dough, rolling it thinner and thinner.
One morning red flags with black swastikas
hang from every house but yours and you begin
to learn you're different, hear fear, its breathiness
in the questions your family are always whispering.
There's the day your mother, brother and you
kiss goodbye to Vienna, to taut-faced relatives.
A few survived. Your half-Jewish cousin spent
six years of war crouched in a cupboard. At school
in High Wycombe you learnt to be English.
Today, we're tourists eating apfelstrudel in the café
at the Hotel Bristol, sipping java green tea
served with lemon and sticks of crystal sugar.
You talk about Herr Hitler, his words erupting
from the radio, remember a girl, her voice rising
out of the crowd in crazy rapture. You tell me
he stayed once in this hotel, mention the room number.
Like him we're going to the Opera House,
a place no one in your family thought of visiting.
We'll gaze at pillars, mirrors, tiers of chandeliers,
climb to the plush layers, watch Siegfried,
the perfect hero, forging his sword, killing the dragon.
And we'll be beguiled by the music carrying
the forest bird's words, by triumph's glitter.
When the singing ends we'll cross the road,
come again to this café...Back in the world
which has changed so much, so little,
we bite through the perfect snow that powders
each slice to layer on pastry layer fine
as flakes from skin, petals from a rose,
with each mouthful taste the sweet, the bitter.
Page(s) 52
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