Seeking Shelter

In Henry Moore's painting shelterers
huddle, hairless hooded against curved
walls, squeezed in a cave, tunnel
mouth tube of black, still air.

    My father walked Shanghai streets, 1939
        Japanese bombs blooming into flaming orange
            fruit. Better than burial, he thought
                beneath the weight of brick, better fire
                    roar than
                      dark.

Patient they sit out another air
raid, muffled sirens screaming to folded
hands. They wear heads like birds -- owl

woman with black-bruised eyes, quill beaked
ibis man staring down, falcon child and mother
dove, gathered like gods in gloom.

        I see him walking, hands behind his back, long
                strides in deserted streets
                    weeping for his parents, dead at Auschwitz
                        for his lover lost
                            at Theresien, for his broken life. In
                              Shanghai

    tiger heat he sweats
                in bed, sleepless in the ghetto of Hong Kew
                        typhus shrunk, slugs vodka until sleep
                            comes or he no longer
                                cares.

Their doughy bodies bulge and flow white
and pink, fired from within as if your hand
could touch their breasts like lantern
skin, and burn.