Leonore Hildebrandt
Child Soldier
The ear is a snail, a spiral, an empty shell. When, after years, the boy is returned to his
mother, he wears a small rock in each ear to lessen the torment. He does not fear the men
of the pick-ups as much as the voices ringing inside. Hammer to anvil. Beyond, the world
is bright, too bright to endure. The ear hollows far into a bony labyrinth. He does not want
to remove them, the rocks. They are round and hard. They protect the doors and windows
from shattering. In the camp, relatives greet him, wondering if he can hear their singing.
They sacrifice a white goat. Tympanic rupture––the voices slosh back and forth. He covers
his head. The man who brought him here points out improvements––after days of oblivion,
the boy cringed at the sight of a gun. The ear is a drum, and three bones are beating,
beating. He has returned––a small rock tumbling in the sorrow-river.
Choose Compassion
I know violence when I see it.
Suffering from nightmares,
I resolve to confront
my own fear and trauma.
My guide tells me things
I am happy to hear––
be kind to yourself,
give yourself some slack.
In one dream I glide freely
among trees and meadows.
In another I see my father
in the sepia of his WWII slides
pushing a wooden wheelbarrow
with two slumped figures––
the dead comrades. He’s laboring
off the train onto a busy gate.
When I try to follow
the conductor waves me back in.
The doors slam.
Should I choose guilt?
Humanity is not “doomed”
by an “existential threat”––
there are too many of us.
Why this hyperbole?
Isn’t it sad enough to lose
one third of the birds?
My guide says, you don’t
have to draw a line in the sand.
Leave some wiggle room.
“I grew up in Germany as the daughter of a WWII soldier and subsequent POW in Russia. My family was silent about that part of our history. In ‘Choose Compassion,’ I found spaces––both real and imagined––for this troubling legacy to play out. ‘Child Soldier’ was triggered by my reading of the sacrificing of a goat, a detail which led me to a community’s vulnerability and to the boy’s listening inward.” —Leonore Hildbrandt
Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of Where You Happen to Be, The Next Unknown, and The Work at Hand. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Denver Quarterly, Harpur Palate, Rhino, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Originally from Germany, Leonore divides her time between Harrington, Maine, and Silver City, New Mexico.