To Become an Exile
by Zachary Adama
I feel a pull
inward
to become an exile.
To withdraw
from a public
that has become
sacrilege to my private values.
I am bewildered
that the worst in us
has become commonplace.
I am a foreigner
in my land
a place
where hate is more desirable than love
fear more tolerable than acceptance
and ignorance more comfort than truth.
I do not know these neighbors and friends
that I once assumed shared a common decency.
A decency now uncommon
as the worst in us
becomes middling.
I have become
a stranger
in a strange land
that has lost the capacity
for self-preservation.
That’s a pretty accurate description.
Thank you, Kurt! I feel sympathy for the internal self-exile of decent Germans, who withdrew from the public sphere in Nazi Germany. But at the same time I strive to remember the consequences.