Hugh Mitchell - Dresden - October 2003

To the city that died
our peacetime plane flew in
like some tardy British bomber through
an absence of resistance.
The taxi brought me here
where cheerful well-fed folk
flock the hotel bar
with chat and smoke
and I, from another
bombed-out town,
think back to soot-black tiles
brick-piles soaked with the cries
of those slowly dying.

But the living swarmed back
- they mostly do -
re-built, prospered through trade, finally
forgot what now we only see
in flickering newsreel shots.
Revenge for Coventry -
dust-devilled lunar landscapes
fading screams
and silence
and smoke -
to mention which,
here in this fine hotel,
would now seem just embarrassing
or, perhaps,
a joke.

Hugh Mitchell

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dresden-october-2003/