You didn’t die
the mauve death . . .

Here is a man.
Here is a despised man,
a pariah with a human tongue.
In his mother tongue
he speaks good German:
“der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.”*
Here is a rifle and a bullet.
Here his mother, her ash-
colored hair streaked with blood.
Here is an oven, here a shovel.
Here a man digs his own grave
while another man drinks,
he drinks ice-clear vodka,
his eyes are blue.
Here is a man moved to stone.
No stone to mark his mother’s
grave: bone, ash, smoke.
Here is a stranger without papers,
a rucksack filled with poems.
Black sun, mute earth,
River Seine is home.