Beloved Albatross

Are the dead my credentials?
What’s my pain worth?

Through the thick fog of time I still recall a living
frontier on the move:
the Oder crossed by Germans trading fears
with Lublin-fleeing Poles,
Sudatens and East Prussians drifting
from Berlin to DP camps
Slavs purging Italians
from their ancestral home
all fleeing, criss-crossing
the scorched, blood-soaked lands
of the Imperial cauldron
limping, shuffling, clutching
relics of an order forever gone
which no alchemist will ever
reassemble.

– DP –
the newly minted global entity
­his forehead, hands, and ass rubber-stamped
deloused, poked, probed, palpated, re-named, classified, consigned,
invoiced, re-routed, detained
de-fascistfied, de-communisted,
ignored, uprooted, and re-planted
in virgin foreign soil.

Now and then I still stroke
half-consciously my beloved albatross
for I cannot let go
the one ghost-feather
my fingers keep brushing by
– Fiume –
too often she's whispered
"you're mine"

Perhaps one day I'll say "I'm sorry" and leave her,
but... not just yet,
as I finger rusty keys
whose locks seem lost
forever.