Walking
the boy saw:
The moon in a slot of sky
between the roofs of two houses.
Metal cobbles like shiny
backs of beetles – pieces of armor in a
book.
A yellow leaf shaped like
a heart or the tip of a spear flew
up against the steel-gray sky.
A house that showed a corner
of shattered masonry;
thin mud colored bricks.
The hands held feeling like
the orange light of a candle in a narrow
room.
On the white walls of a house
black lines.
Behind the calcimined walls
pictures of fish swallowing
their tails.
The blank faces of the houses and the
cylindrical trees.
This was 1937 or 1938.
*homeland
In 1940, at age 8, Walter Hess immigrated to the US from Germany. He studied at CCNY (1952); UCLA (1955-56), Graduate Film Program, MA, CCNY Writing Program, 2003. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Mima Amakim, Jewish Currents, and translations from the German in Metamorphosis. He was awarded a prize from The Academy of American Poets in 2002. He received the Nyman Foundation, prize a selection from his memoir, The Broken Snare. A book of poetry, Jew’s Harp from Pleasure Boat Press, came out in the fall of 2010. Most recently he is the author of a memoir A Refugee’s Journey, 2018.
