(for Rosey)
Her parents and her dolls destroyed,
her childhood foreclosed,
she watched the foreign soldiers from
the sunlit window whose black bars
Were crooked crosses inked upon
her pallid face. “Liebchen,
Liebchen, you should be in bed.”
But she felt ill no longer.
And because that day was a holy day
when even the dead, it seemed,
must rise, she was allowed to stay
and see the golden strangers who
Were Father, Brother, and her dream
of God. Afterwards
she said, “They were so beautiful,
and they were not afraid.”