After the automatic eye clicks a frame
of the sky and pivots, we get a glimpse of death's
geography, as seen from above the firestorm
that ravages Berlin, where rivers snake
through smoke-green trees of May.
A Messerschmidt's machine gun fire clips
the wing and cowling off a Flying Fortress
just below us: the black hull sails off in silence,
down to the suicide graves of Kleist,
along the riding paths of the Tegeler See
or drops through curtained eggsshell windowpanes
of Schloss Charlottenburg's gardens
where Schubert sits and plays klavier.
This disembodied airship, like the tonnage
of shrapnel around it, stands frozen
for a moment of its past, looking
like the serpent that swallows its tail
forever, or the eye of God, just as it blinks,
but knowing this is war, and man, in 1945,
we're left to brood and wonder.

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