A Pretty Sight. David O'Meara

the billiards table, unfazed, looking

      for all the world like she’s just

      breezed in from 1933

      and there’s no nightmare to come.

      But the picture’s all wrong, her face

      unaged, and where are Alex,

      Willi or Christoph?

      Sophie sighs, presses

      a hand against her brother’s cheek.

      ‘Hans, it’s because we died.’

      She describes the trial,

      its forgone verdict, the bulbs

      that burned all night in their cells,

      the shared last cigarette

      in the courtyard. Hans has turned

      the details over again,

      his memory tightening the blurs

      like a Leica lens while the tension

      in his face subsides

      in the respite of knowing

      at least they tried. They’re even laughing,

      aping the parrot shrieks

      of Friesler’s indignation,

      gossiping over the Führer’s last pose,

      Hans with a finger

      cocked against his temple.

      They order café viennois.

      Sophie pokes at the dollops of whip

      while ordered traffic crawls

      past the painted glass

      of the window. The newest papers

      in wooden clips

      fanned across

      the billiard nap. Skinhead rallies,

      latest dictatorships. Hans makes

      another hopeless gesture.

      Did everything change, or nothing?

      Coffees done, they consider the years

      like doors they never entered,

      as if history’s just a lot

      of people trying

      to get from one room

      to another. Outside, Hans

      mounts the steps of a slowing tram.

      Sophie ties her hair back

      with an abalone barrette

      as she turns

      down Leopoldstrasse

      and waves, looking for all the world

      like she’s going to haunt it.