In the summer I walked barefoot to school. 
I had no shoes. Sometimes we had ‘klapperle’,
sandals made from wood that ‘bit’ your sole
near your toes when the leather that covered
the hinges had worn away. But my feet
had hardened during that long autumn,
when we ran through the stubble
left by the harvesters of wheat, rye, and oats.

In the winter we’d use the skis that our wheelwright
made. ‘Lift your arm to measure the length.’

Our landlord had chickens. Sometimes I was allowed
to go and fetch an egg. Still warm and not too clean.
Sometimes, in the spring, I would play with the baby goats.

Sometimes I didn’t know how to explain the holes
in my homework. Paper almost punched out.
I’d left my budgie alone for a moment.
Mother bent over the sewing machine.

The worst days were the days of butchering. 
The pig’s cry almost human. 

That spring morning when the radio said that
the war was over, that Germany had capitulated,
that the American Forces were coming in,
that spring morning when the jeeps and planes
‘parked’ on the new, green shoots
that was our food.
	

Can’t find the place
where we buried the cockerel.
Sometimes I can still hear the rabbit’s
high-pitched scream.

There was that boy who asked
for a kiss and I said no.
Embarrassed he ripped off some
grass. He had short pudgy hands
with bitten fingernails.

In the town on which I’d turned my back
we’d planted trees. For a long while
they stood there, thin and unassuming.
Sixty years later they hide my youth.