The second autobiographical poem is called "A Night Out"
and is simply a story about going to a film,
to a movie in London.
"Friends recommended the new Polish film at the Academy
in Oxford Street.
So we joined the ever melancholy queue of cinema.
A wind blew faint suggestions of rain towards us,
and an accordion.
Later, uneasy in the velvet dark,
we peered through the cut-out oblong window
at the sparkling drama of our nightmares.
Images of Auschwitz, almost authentic,
the human obscenity in close-up.
Certainly we could imagine the stench.
Resenting it, we forgot the barbed wire was but a prop,
and could not scratch an eye.
Those striped victims merely actors like us.
We saw the Camp orchestra assembled.
We heard the solemn gaiety of Bach,
scored by the loud arrival of an engine, its impotent cry
and its guttural tracks.
We watched, as we munched milk chocolate, trustful children,
no older than our own, strolling into the chambers without fuss,
while smoke, black and curly, oozed from chimneys.
Afterwards, at a loft, we sipped coffee in a bored espresso bar
nearby, saying very little.
You took off one glove.
Then to the comfortable suburb swiftly, where arriving home,
we garaged the car.
We asked the au pair girl from Germany
if anyone had phoned at all or called,
and of course, if the children had woken.
Reassured, together we climbed the stairs, undressed together,
and naked together in the dark, in the marital bed, made love."