Lore's Necklace

Before all the clocks stopped, I fingered each of her beads like a prayer to the past

I remember this

I remember that

I remembered richly even while tomorrow grew thinner and thinner.

Before the game was pulped for turbines, I held the talisman

on my tongue, chanting

the poet's golden riddles

for luck.

One strand of intoxicating verse

looped into another into another to glow for all

time.

This was in old West Berlin

in the shaggy metropolis with the mid-morning schnapps breath.

I heard the poet chanting

silence, silence, silence

before the collapsed glitz of winter in surreal Paris

and

the bead became the blue rose

in the enchanted necklace

rare like that.

for Leonore Uhlmann-Heyland and Joachin Uhlmann