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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  Childhood Memories

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

William Saphier

Childhood Memories

THOSE years are foliage of trees,

their trunks hidden by bushes;

behind them a grey haze topped with silver

hides the swinging steps of my first love

the Danube.

On its face

grave steel palaces with smoking torches,

parading monasteries moved slowly to the Black Sea

till the bared branches scratched the north wind.

On its bed

a great Leviathan waited

for the ceremonies on the arrival of Messiah

and bobbing small fishes snapped sun splinters

for the pleasure of the monster.

Along its shores

red capped little hours danced

with rainbow colored kites,

messengers to heaven.

My memory is a sigh

of swallows swinging

through a slow dormant summer

to a timid line on the horizon.