We were married once
me and Louisa
and had a child
though it seems I was a pisspoor father
which may be why it didn't last
and she was older
which might not have suited
but what of the child
was it a girl? I don't remember
it's embarrassing
at least that's was the feeling
in my dream
upon waking I asked my wife
since there was no-one I could conjur
by that name
until I thought of BBC's Doc Martin
and his love Louisa
who on the screen becomes his wife
and mother of his child
so I wondered if it had to do with things
I shared with that eccentric English doctor
so intelligent and useful in emergencies
but who treated everyone as if
they must be stupid
thanks to his inability to recognize
the symptoms of his mild
but obvious autism
something I'm only just coming to know
in myself
and so perhaps the dream
but then today
just one day later here's Luisa
without the "o" brought back to life
by the intrepid literary archeologist
excavator of other lives
Winfried Sebald in his book The Emigrants
this Luisa sent a trove of memories
handwritten - of her childhood and her early years
to her son Max
whom Sebald came to know in Manchester
the pages - Sebald quotes from them at length
offer a glimpse into a world the war destroyed
and whose traces the Germans have since
done much to erase

Luisa Ferber née Lanzberg
daughter of a German Jewish family
solid middle-class
in 1936 her mother Lisa
perhaps forseeing what the future held
took her own life
her father, husband and herself shipped out
and murdered in the Nazi camps in '42
the year I was conceived
Max had escaped to England three years earlier
his mother's memoires
written toward the end
when she clearly knew
what was in store
and then passed on by Max
to Sebald after half a century
strange for this Luisa to show up
the day after my dream