European Dream
Born between wars,
you knew war, mud, cold, hunger, blood.
You wore brown clothing, saw gray trees,
ate spongy potatoes frozen in the ground,
foraged unplanted grainfields skimpily bearded
with a few renegade straws from last year’s crop.
On the dim-lit train no one spoke
as you traveled through bombed, magnificent cities
you had never seen before:
a street-sweeper in an alley, looking for food,
a palace shattered so great paintings
hung innocent to the open sky,
apartment buildings with broken lifts
and granite stairwells swayed
by three-hundred years of foot traffic.
You ate horsemeat and soupbones,
then zebra, rhinoceros and peacock
when the revolution of the hungry
stormed the zoo and slaughtered
the strange foreign animals for food.