The Rain

When my older brother came back from war he had on his forehead a little silver star and under the star an abyss a splinter of shrapnel hit him at Verdun or perhaps at Grünwald (he’d forgotten the details) he used to talk much in many languages but he liked most of all the language of history until losing breath he commanded his dead pals to run Roland Kowaski Hannibal he shouted that this was the last crusade that Carthage soon would fall and then sobbing confessed that Napoleon did not like him we looked at him getting paler and paler abandoned by his senses he turned slowly into a monument into musical shells of ears entered a stone forest and the skin of his face was secured with the blind dry buttons of eyes nothing was left him but touch what stories he told with his hands in the right he had romances in the left soldier’s memories they took my brother and carried him out of town he returns every fall slim and very quiet he does not want to come in he knocks at the window for me we walk together in the streets and he recites to me improbable tales touching my face with blind fingers of rain