Third Generation
The old man in the square sells trinkets and balloons
when he has got enough money to buy a little dream
and he enters the market town’s only saloon.
By the bar thinks of his lemon selling father who had
a mule that had white as a duckling’s plume, and
fruit as yellow as only Gunter Grass can paint them.
Remembers his grandfather a cobbler who walked
around town with a sack of promises given to him by
people who were never around on pay day.
Every Christmas he opened the sack and let broken
promises fly up in the air and forever disappear, liars
and cheats should not feel guilty of telling fibs.
Outside the old man’s balloons had flown away, free
of strings filled the air with jubilation like errant people
who had once again been let off the catch.
Günter Grass
You have just written
What we think
They will come for you
Now
Demanding
The return
Of your Nobel Prize.
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