BRAIDED STREAMS
19
THE COURAGE OF SOPHIE SCHOLL* If I were you, Sophie, I would speak out, speak up, shout curses at the pavement, pile leaflets on every doorstep, I would take a chainsaw to the trees blocking the road, erase my image from the janitor’s eyes this, I would do but I am not you, telling the judge: what we wrote and said is believed by many, they just don’t dare express themselves. I am not you, convicted and sentenced to the guillotine, saying good-bye to mother, my father, without tears. I am not even able to count the bodies, those lost for any reason, I am simply at home, in the kitchen, with water running and my eyes filled with tears---from the onions frying on the stove from dust gathered on the bookshelves and under the stairs. We are, as we all know, born of dust and to dust return disintegrated bodies passing through, like the white roses arranged in a vase by the fragile light of the fire, wine poured, a glass for each of us. Drink up. To your health. To mine. Drink up, drink up. *Sophie and Hans Scholl were founding members of the Nazi resistance movement, “The White Rose.” The brother and sister were arrested on February 18, after a janitor reported seeing them distributing leaflets at the University of Munich. They were executed four days later, on February 22, 1943.