Bundestalk in Bonn, 1984
Flurries of junketed Fulbright scholars
from Uncle America
meet Chancellor Kohl
on the stair.
Fully bright himself,
Helmut probes and lobbies
with sinewy words
of Pennsylvania,
of resistance against the Nazis
and of his childhood regional Rhenish.
Meanwhile, he complains,
Reagan's attention has turned
to the Pacific Rim.
Helmut Kohl plays hurt
in his feelings.
The Rhine is only meters away,
where a coal, barge, labors, south, against, the flow.
- Richard Hacken