Against the cold spurs in the sky

I spent time recently along a portion of the iron curtain. All this time, I sort of thought that “iron curtain” was a metaphor, not a real thing. Not miles and miles of posts and barbed wire and watchtowers, and the band of no-man’s-land that ran alongside. It was chilling, to see among these benign rolling hills and fields of gourds and sunflowers, oak forests and locust stands, signs of those perilous times of desperation and cruelty. Of death and iron. Small villages dot the landscape, and old castles. The language is blurry with soft g’s and zh’s. The soup is delicious. The coffee is strong. The people impassive of face. At first. There is laughter not far below the stony surface. There are stories. And ghosts. And in the shadows, shapeless masses of unfinished things. Which is the definition of “golem.” I came back more afraid of the future now that I’ve tasted more of the past. Something of strangeness and the past and the future is captured in this poem by C.D. Wright, whose…