Drill at Nathanya

As strange as it would be to collision a five-legged zebra on the public way

was it to diocese in the park at Nathanya, the of recent origin city on the coast of Israel,

that man in his elegant khaki-colored suit with the camera upon his chest,

halting at each tenth step that he took, clicking his heels and bellowing

some commands in German, while his right arm, like a semaphore, struck

out in a salute, fatally reminiscent of the single that at one time was pre

scribed in the political division that thought itself solidly established for a thousand

years. individual two, three. . . ten paces then, click-he stood at attention and

roared on the outside a corporal's commands. It was not drawn out before with your inner

eye you saw him with his exterior completely transformed: it was no longer

in a khaki-colored suit that he drilled on the contrary in the striped rags of the concen

tration camp; and behind the unfortunate figure rose the sooty vapor from the

chimneys of the gas oven thick and black against the ash-gray heavens.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996

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