Approaching the battlements of the school
where you passed your childhood
you pause over Savignyplatz,
named for the translator of Vico,
who setting humanity free centuries ago,

housing the shards of the school
you attended before the world exploded
into fragments of baroque ornaments.
Make do with what is resurrected today,
isolated pieces of the interior broken away.

Like Incan ruins excavated
too early, in too much ignorance.
Machu Picchu’s signs are erased by rain,
evacuated of artefacts
that prophesied another day.

Your memory said that rusted fragments preserve
the wholes of our shattered lives.
When you addressed Hamlet’s skull, returning
to the Berlin battlements that sheltered your childhood,
the whole was emptying out, entire populations lost. 

A rejected thesis & Wanderlust
Sent you sailing across the Pyrenees
towards a New World. History intervened,
inflicting another sovereign on your country:
popularly elected, publicly scorned.

originally published in Descant

Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of the poetry collection Cityscapes (Alien Buddha Press, 2019) and the award-winning monograph Writers & Rebels (Yale University Press). She has translated many books from Persian and Georgian, including After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry (2017) and for Lunch Ticket's Gabo Prize (2017).