I find a seat on this Austrian train
among a group of senior citizens
paging through Venice guidebooks,
deciding what sights to see
as they unwrap hard-boiled eggs
and sausages brought from home.
I have not sat among Germans since
my student days. I have not kept up
with the language. They ask me
where I’m going. I stumble with syntax,
I don’t know how to say I’m a writer on retreat.
I don’t know how to say I’m giving an academic paper.
With egg yolk on her face, a woman
tells me, Referat. I call up the word
from my throat, roll it on my tongue,
until my body remembers my junior year abroad
seminar seat at Uni Konstanz, the Klopsen at the Mensa.
I nod to the woman, Ja, ein Referat in Antwerp.
I imagine other trains full of laughing Germans.
I think of cattle cars delivering my relatives
to Treblinka and Bełźec. I turn to the window
and look to the fields ready for harvest.
INSTANT NOODLES 