Schultheiss Bierstube Poem by Leo Yankevich

I look down, see there's a new bank
where the Schultheiss Bierstube was
the summer of 1934.
It was a place where Germans drank
their märzen, pilsner, kölsch. The buzz
of saws in their ears, they would look
out windows on the raised ground floor,
at ducks on the canal, a rook
atop a branch. The barges passed
weighed down with lumber, coal, and steel
on to the Oder railway line.
They drank as long as moments last,
their hopes and dreams expressed in zeal,
hard labour in a mill or mine.
Today, no lager quenches thirst,
no ale cools tongues. The winners of
the war are punished like the cursed,
rooks in the wake of dirty doves.




Gleiwitz-Gliwice,17 February 2016