How Do You Write About Nazis?

By having them prepare breakfast,
or mow the lawn and chide young Franz
for picking bluebells from his mother’s boxes.

We all are ignorant of other people’s pain,
sometimes. The Russian grandmother
who gorges on strawberries now they’re cheap,
rifled from the place where bodies pile up
and children in parkas weep for dead parents.

The Israelite who praises current policy
as in the background warheads burr
on track to shatter someone’s lifelong home.

Evil was never a suit of clothes, a totem or
The Past. It was always people at breakfast,
a dull routine that’s based on others’ bones.