Lore’s Necklace by Josepha Gutelius

Lore’s Necklace
Josepha Gutelius
(for Leonore Uhlmann-Heyland and Joachin Uhlmann)

Before all the clocks stopped, I fingered each of her beads like a prayer to the past
     I remember this
     I remember that
I remembered richly even while tomorrow grew thinner and thinner.

Before the game was pulped for turbines, I held the talisman
on my tongue, chanting
the poet’s golden riddles
for luck.

One strand of intoxicating verse
looped into another into another to glow for all
           time.
This was in old West Berlin
in the shaggy metropolis with the mid-morning schnapps breath.
I heard the poet chanting
silence, silence, silence
before the collapsed glitz of winter in surreal Paris
           and
the bead became the blue rose
in the enchanted necklace
           rare like that

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