Miles made no difference to the war that ended before I was born &
went on smoldering, becoming the air. On a Munich corner my songs
were thin scarves, German along my skin sounded like tattoos
so I fled the foam-friendly Oktoberfesters, turned a traveler's check
into a train I stepped off in Italy. My ride was driving back towards his
war oxidized forty years in sea-wash at Salerno. Microbus, white mustache
equally tidy, seemed happy for company of a kid his age the day they
waded from English boats into blur. Were motors beating, bullets,
waves of maimed young men in his memory when my Englishman
pilgrimed south? German-made flat-four putt-putting us down the road,
roadside bread with cheese & all tucked neatly back under bench seats,
until with no explanation he pulled over by a field & ordered me out,
country sun slanting on my duct-taped guitar case. So I never saw
him walk onto the sand, the Mediterranean's green-dark shush.
DAN ALTER is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley.
