Days of 1923

[horatioalone]

The sole survivor of his graduating class,
recipient of the Iron Cross, and morphine
addict, Bruno contemplates the void.
Eggs cost ten billion marks these days, and bread
a hundred billion. He’s considered drinking
his paints, just like Van Gogh, but only because
the water’s been shut off. And who needs art
now anyway? What is there to be said
after the trenches and the mustard gas,
bits of intestine dangling from tree branches,
boys with their jaws blown off, the screams of shells
that nightly thunder in his rented room?
The landlord’s Jewish, Bruno thinks, and scowls.
And never mind that so’s his friend, who served
beside him in the company of lancers
and saved his skin in no man’s land three times.