Rothenburg, Dinkelsbühl, Nördlingen — like boats

emerging from the mist, adrift with unreality,

Flying Dutchmen, neither in nor out of time—

where could they carry three exiles, moonstruck

as we were by their turrets, cobbles, and moats?

To graveyards with shattered stars of the long-ago

expelled. Through shrines to the Maiden's spiked embrace

and ancient churches with noseless Madonnas

reformed to Lutheran tastes. Then into the empty

cloister bakery where the Death once swelled the dough.

But what could truly touch us half a millennium

from their tortures and their plagues? The flowers

at every window blazoned like robed choirs extolling

that summer day, and in the Burggarten where we lingered,

lindens, busy with the commerce of the air, hummed

a melody of forgetfulness of all but then and there