Interrogation

Corporal Knobloch, was it you who smuggled 
letters out of prison from Bonhoeffer to a friend? 
Were you also a friend of that traitor to the Reich? 
How did you sneak the letters past the censors? 
Tucked in your sock? Stuffed in your sleeve 
as you snapped “Heil Hitler” on your way out? 
              “When I read your letter yesterday, it felt 
                like the first drops of water in a long time 
               from a spring, in the absence of which 
              my spiritual life had begun to wither.” 
You must have mailed them on your trek home, 
sirens wailing through blacked-out Berlin, 
glass shards crunching beneath your boots. 
Had you known he wrote on the frivolous subjects 
of friendship and faith, would you have “dared 
to do the good” after the attempt on Hitler’s life? 
               “It’s true that not everything that happens 
                is simply ‘God’s will.’ But in the end nothing happens 
               apart from God’s will, that is, in every event, 
               even the most ungodly, there is a way through to God.” 
That you vanished near war’s end saved the Reich 
a precious bullet. And despite your paltry treason 
for his sake, Bonhoeffer was killed. Yet I must ask: 
Did you sense that his ideas would be lost 
if you failed to post them into the future 
where they continue to arrive? 
               “Not only action but suffering, too, 
                is a way to freedom. In suffering, liberation consists 
               in being allowed to let the matter out of one’s own hands 
               into the hands of God.” 
Oh Knobloch! I, too, was there! 
But I have never been able to let 
the matter out of my own hands.