50 Years Ago Richard Nixon resigned- I saw it in Trier, West Germany. We convinced the owners of our favorite pub to say open at 2:30 a.m. so members of Sommerprogramm Georgetown could watch. It was worth it for them and for us. I was starting graduate school at Georgetown University in DC then. I never finished, but that is another story.
In June 1974 I went to Georgetown to finalize arrangements for participating in the program. Through a Penn State friend in graduate school at George Washington University, I was invited to a party in his apartment building where David and Julie (Nixon) Eisenhower attended; I said hello to David, and Julie made the rounds to talk with everybody.
The poem is from my thematically best-arranged book.
https://www.amazon.com/Accents-Arthur-Turfa/dp/1980326703
Trier, 1974
From atop the Porta
Nigra
you gaze into the centuries;
into narrow streets where
Constantine and Karl Marx walked,
at graceful vineyards climbing the hills
that hold a blue, scattered-cloud sky
over the Moselle looping its way Rhineward.
Days spent confined at the Uni,
preparing for life on the Potomac,
smoothing access to labyrinths
it turned out I would never actually enter.
Evenings roaming the streets
roaring with laughter and lager,
long weekend crowded in Citroën 2cv
straining to and from
Amsterdam.
Romance along the riverside
or
as Nixon’s resignation
crept into history
and we greeted
rosy-fingered dawn.
Reconnecting for some
years with others
as we settled into our
roles different
from what we had
imagined.
Decades later returning
to find
the irony of all
ironies: restored
amphitheater and baths,
ancient items
abounding to be
appreciated,
but my haunts
long-absorbed
by covetous neighbors
and the like
with no trace of their
existence
except in my memories.
Every once in a while I
meet
someone who knows the
city,
and who from atop the Porta
Nigra
has also gazed into the
centuries.
We share the glistening
prize
nestled between the
hills
and the Moselle flowing
west.
From Accents ©2017, Kindle Desktop Publishing
Such a wonderful window into a different time and to see how very little things really change. The truism of finding ourselves in roles we had not imagined, is placed perfectly within the context here. Such wonderful poetry.
ReplyDeleteThe good thing was that Nixon stepped down and did not call for an insurrection. Our democracy held. Thanks for your comment. It was a wonderful summer. At the time I was going to attend Georgetown, get a Master's in something I did not love, and then go into the Federal bureaucracy. I decided against that a few months later; there's some poetry about all of that.
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