Alice Derry

Fully, Tenderly

She’s laughing to think of Hardy
so unflappable he opened his sandwiches
during the interrogation and began to eat.

The Stasi had waited for the moment
his confirmation students,
bragging among the others, said the words:

Pastor Horn had defended the bishop,
had therefore accused
the Free Press of lies.

The mayor’s daughter brought the story home.
Police hustled the students
into signing their claims and arrested Hardy.

Ask any of the free thinkers who did time
at Bautzen if you dismiss his arrest
as just another drama of a fake government.

Mechthild sent the sandwiches—
barely on her feet again,
their fourth child a few days old.

Remember, she tells me, Hardy’s parishioners
were mostly farmers, independent, stubborn.
They owed the state nothing.

“Don’t worry,” they comforted. “We’ll pray.
In the evening, he’ll be back.”
Her half-apology chokes on rising tears:

“Come evening, he was back.”
The older children fed and sleeping,
the little one tucked beside her

where she waited under the lamp.
She could hear him let himself in.
Then he was standing beside her.

The church hired the right lawyer.
His parishioners packed the courtroom.
He got off on a technicality.

Afterwards he left the house
each morning early as usual,
climbed the hill to the church.

Each morning he found her,
took leave of her,
fully, tenderly, as if for the last time.

 

The city of Bautzen housed a famous East German prison for political dissidents. My mother’s cousin, Hardy Horn, remained an outspoken Lutheran minister during the entire East German regime, enduring, among other harassments, several arrests by the secret police (Stasi).

 

 

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