After Corey Mesler
Last night I was a child again
in Jutland, Denmark, nineteen forty-two.
My mother’s milk surged as I suckled
and kneaded her distended breast.
A growing roar shook windowpanes,
her dripping nipple swung away.
She shuddered, looked outside and up
as dark things in a wedge crept by.
She wept and trembled, crushed
my face into her breast as engine noises dimmed.
I sucked in eerie silence, blissful, unaware
that German mothers and their children
soon would suffer, starve and die.
Author’s Comments: Corey Mesler’s poem, “Last Night I Was a Child Again in Raleigh,” was published in his book, Among the Mensans by Iris Press, 2017.
According to family legend, British bombers flew over the hospital when I was born on March 7, 1942 in Nørresundby on the north shore of Limfjorden in northern Jylland (Jutland). They would probably have been headed for the German naval bases and industry around Hamburg, Germany, where many civilians would be killed.
We were relatively safe in Denmark under German occupation.
Image credit: British fighters, bomber escorts, superimposed on Pablo Picasso’s painting, ‘Maternity’
Finn's primary audience is the national Danish-American community reached through The Bridge: Journal of the Danish American Heritage Society, which has published his poems since 2015.
- Last Night I Was Child Again – by Finn Bille - March 19, 2020
- Peace Poem – by Finn Bille - July 6, 2014
- The King’s Coin — Poem by Finn Bille - July 6, 2014
Dr Bille – You probably don’t remember me but my name is Chip Crain. You taught me English at Baylor years ago.
I recently thought of you when the movie Dune was released. You required our class to read it despite it being what I thought was ridiculously long at the time (I have re-read it at least three times since as well as the rest of the books in the series(.
I just wanted to reach out to you and let you know while I wasn’t the best student I did learn and appreciate all you tried to accomplish while at Baylor. Enough of it stayed with me to decide to write to you now and say thanks.
Chip Crain
Class of 1980