Stephanie’s War

Standing on her balcony, she’d rant
down at our courtyard, You’re a nasty person,
you’re very nasty, though she scarcely knew you.
Stephanie was old and lived alone. 

She had a screen of potplants by the railing;
she fed them, spoke to them and watered them
twice daily, which was chiefly when she opened up
on any innocent walking in the courtyard. 

She was convinced the people in the flat below
used radar to track her movements room to room
She’d wake them, banging the floor at 2am.
A stream of haggard tenants came and went.

Stephanie was Jewish, she fled Warsaw
with her brother when the tanks came. She was twenty.
They went to Rome and lived as Gentiles, said
that they were married. Then Hitler followed her.

To earn a living, Stephanie was working
as a cook. Two SS officers moved in
nearby and offered her a job. Her brother feared
they might investigate if she refused.

For a year she made the Nazis’ meals. Post-war
she wouldn’t cook at all, ate only cold food,
and from her Burwood balcony she’d blast away
daily at the jackboot world besieging her.

Of course it had to happen, the tenantless
owners underneath called the authorities.
Two policemen in black uniforms, with a psych nurse,
knocked on her door. They said she had to pack

immediately and go with them. They took her
weeping to a police car, to a locked ward.
Her nephew got her flat, the potplants died
and Rome was Stephanie’s eternal city.