I saw my grandfather
caught in a ring of bodies
which slumped around him like scattered notes.
There were tears in his eyes.

He was shaking visibly
to some personal music.
His mouth, like a broken five-bar gate,
was letting out any noise that wanted to come,

a hissing stream of spent gas
touching nothing.
The bullet he had taken
and kept locked in his flesh

for thirty years sang within him,
seeping out through scar tissue like light.
He mouthed the Kaddish
to people thin as snowdrops caught in frost

whilst the Iron Cross on his chest glinted yellow in the deepening sun.

© Adam Horovitz