Vienna 2017

Poem by Jeanette Le Quick

We sit in Café Sperl, order a melange and strudel,
which comes with a metal tray, a tiny glass of water, sugar
cubes. Daily international newspapers hang from wooden
holders, lamps hang long from the ceiling onto old men
playing pool. Dark wood panels, yellowed portraits of white
old men line the walls. They say this one was a favorite
of Hitler; the one in the center was Lenin’s, and Trotsky’s,
too. Stalin, Freud, Tito, other man-giants sipped melange
in other Viennese cafés and thought big thoughts. Who
could have known the small man with hair over his eyes
would order millions of people to be killed, or what envy
coated his heart standing outside the Academy of Fine Arts,
watching painters enter the building to which he could not
gain entry. Serpentine couches line the edges of the café,
rounded seats covered in cherry-red, flowered patterns
of gold, green, thin wood legs descending to the floor tipped
in metal protectors. Perhaps he sat in one of these chairs,
drank an iced coffee, surprised to find it contains ice cream.
Licked his spoon, wrote curious words about his neighbors.