Jim Burns
A Woman Of Some Education
There are secrets in these places,
and possibly legends. The shabby lady
who pulls her possessions around
in a wheeled shopping basket, stands
in the half-empty afternoon bar,
and moves her arms and legs
like a puppet, and mutters some
unintelligible language. “In a
concentration camp,” the man across
murmurs from behind his white wine,
“Latvian or Pole or something,” and
he lapses into silence. A figure
cuts into my view of the wired woman,
a man with a white beard who, they say,
flew fighters in the war, and lost
his mind when he crashed in the Arctic.
He floats on, and the woman continues
her nervous dance. The wine drinker
lifts his glass to his lips, and they
open again. “A woman of some education,”
he says, and then sips slowly,
as she struts and jerks in time
to some terrifying distant music.
Page(s) 63-64
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