the air-conditioned railjet takes me
with strangely whincing wheels
through winding tracks
along the mountains of my youth
clouds are hanging low
after recent rainfalls
fog shrouds the forest hills
in mystical silhouettes
rises slowly from the valleys
revealing an old castle here
a younger hotel there
the next stop announces
my birthplace
today's wet greenery passing by the window
makes me wonder what it was like
almost seventy years ago
two years after the end of a war
that destroyed many places on the globe
and killed fifty million people
for my mother to give birth to the first
of two sons
with a husband who
at the age of 21
had just made his way
not quite nine months before
escaping from a Soviet POW camp
took him and a friend one month
walking by night
hiding by day
through all of Poland
to end up in a British field hospital
from which they fled
gratefully
when they had regained some energy
jumping trains from northern Germany
to eastern Austria
coming home just before Christmas 1946
and as my hometown disappears in fog and rain
I hear the muted noises of the high-tech train
now on a steady downhill track
musing how easy my own life has been
no wars, dictatorships, catastrophes
how we are born into a world
so different from our parents‘
raised by their words and values
to make our way
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 2:01 PM UTC
the air-conditioned railjet takes me
with strangely whincing wheels
through winding tracks
along the mountains of my youth
clouds are hanging low
after recent rainfalls
fog shrouds the forest hills
in mystical silhouettes
rises slowly from the valleys
revealing an old castle here
a younger hotel there
the next stop announces
my birthplace
today's wet greenery passing by the window
makes me wonder what it was like
almost seventy years ago
two years after the end of a war
that destroyed many places on the globe
and killed fifty million people
for my mother to give birth to the first
of two sons
with a husband who
at the age of 21
had just made his way
not quite nine months before
escaping from a Soviet POW camp
took him and a friend one month
walking by night
hiding by day
through all of Poland
to end up in a British field hospital
from which they fled
gratefully
when they had regained some energy
jumping trains from northern Germany
to eastern Austria
coming home just before Christmas 1946
and as my hometown disappears in fog and rain
I hear the muted noises of the high-tech train
now on a steady downhill track
musing how easy my own life has been
no wars, dictatorships, catastrophes
how we are born into a world
so different from our parents‘
raised by their words and values
to make our way
