Powdered milk from the firm of Harrison Bros., Chicago,
dried egg from Walker’s, Merrymaker & Co., of Kingstown, Alabama,
any flour left unconfiscated by the German camp direction,
and three days’ ration of sugar,
when stirred with properly chlorinated water from Father Rhine,
make an excellent pancake batter.
Fry it on a tin lid
in the lard portion for eight men
over a fire of withered grass.
When you then come to eat it,
each man his eighth,
as it melts in the mouth, you will,
for one scrumptious second, sample the delight of a pampered childhood,
where you snuck into the kitchen to beg for
a spoonful of raw cake mix from the bowl in the time before Christmas,
or a piece of waffle because it was Sunday afternoon and there were visitors,
in that fleeting second you will sniff all
the kitchen aromas of childhood, you will have caught
hold of your mother’s apron,
oh stove warmth, mother warmth—till you
come round, and you see that your hands are empty
and you look at one another hungrily and slouch back
to your hole in the ground. Nor are the portions
all alike either, and you have to see to it
that you get your rightful share.