Love

By Ilse Kramer

Your name is tattooed
On my heart

A sea full of starfish
A sky brimming with rising moons
I can hear them
Singing

And I sing a song of my own
This slender and simple song
Is all that I know
Listen

God of the empty sarcophagus
I love you

Ilse Kramer

Ilse wrote her first verse, a sentimental jingle, in Germany in first grade. She eventually progressed to sonnets, hexameter, haiku, and acrostics. Her first English poem, “Interpretation,” 1963, won second prize in a poetry exhibition. Some of her poetry has been published in a literary magazine, the Providence Journal, Central News, and in anthologies.

Ilse has also published a bibliography of early German Americana at Brown University, and a novel, Pimpinella.