An Unmapped Germany

I can still remember her,
my first bedmate,
whose father was German,
though he might not have spoken the tongue.
For German is what a German builds,
what a German holds,
and what a German inherits -
like the brown gaze she wore,
the only trait inherited from her Russian mother.

Mother Russia,
a basketful of multicolored eyes,
most are shades of blue,
like the ever-changing skies above,
yet shades of brown linger everywhere,
not just here or there,
but across borders and oceans,
under different moons,
in every corner of the world.
And God lets it be so,
that we see, perceive, and deceive,
for in a German uniform,
you can be mistaken from afar.

But up close,
the truth reveals itself -
to look German,
you need a German parent,
like my first lover's blue-eyed father,
with his facial features and blond hair,
passed on to his daughter,
who carried her ethnicity without words,
even beyond those eyes
that mirrored the brown color of her mother's.

In a separate room,
the apartment rented by her cousin and her cousin's husband,
I was making love for the first time in the universe,
in my life,
in a Germany that had never known Hitler's rule,
where they spoke Russian in school,
and even on their return back home;
In a Germany where she took me on a trip to manhood,
with intentions all good
and her touch sweet as the summertime;
She was an empowered medium for my self-discovery,
a chief priestess of my desire,
a willing sacrifice to my passion
in that unmapped Germany,
while outside,
it was still Russia,
January 2,
snow on the ground,
the cold wrapping around passersby,
as history held its breath -
frozen between the sheets
in the warmth of our fleeting eternity.

Depeche Mode and Chris De Burgh were her favorites,
and she spoke of them respectfully as the choir sang,
'We Are the World,'
the only song in English she had there.
Michael Jackson and Tina Turner were alive and kicking,
their last songs yet to be penned,
and the line 'We are the children' suited us nicely
'cause we had just been children ourselves,
only yesterday -
a time enough to change underwear
but not looks or views or the world.
And I hated understanding
what that Russian punk band sang,
lyrics too explicit to fit my preference,
even though they couldn't spoil anything
about the experience I was gaining.

And it's wonderful what Mother Russia can do when she picks from her basket,
when she gifts you a vital experience,
one that feels like exactly what you've been craving for.
You dance upon this ground for all your life,
catching stars that shoot overhead,
and one fine day, you realize that your eternity has stopped fleeing from you,
and that somewhere in the universe, there exists a where and when,
the arms of the German's daughter have never let you out into the cold of the morning after January 2.