The biography is standing where I placed it
on the bookshelf
facing out into the room
and from it Sebald stares
with his right eye
his left eye and the left side of his face
are folded back inside the book
his lower lip is visible beneath
a close cropped mustache
not the least hint of a smile
only a tall forehead
receding hairline
and a look that seems to probe the viewer
in a half-humorous half-serious way
Speak, Silence is the title and the author
writes how Sebald born in 1944
was driven by the silence
that descended on his world
after the war
which is to say on Germany
after the Holocaust
and after Allied bombs had left
a pile of rubble
where German cities had stood before
but what he wrote
the lives that he brings forward
with such a depth of feeling and detail
were as the book cover itself suggests
half truth and half invention interwoven
with great artistry and skill
a monument to what was left unspoken
by fathers who'd returned wishing to leave
behind the horrors they'd experienced
my own was no exeption
so that reading Sebald there's a feeling
I've encountered something strange
and yet strangely familiar
something personal I can't quite put
my finger on