Würzburg

City I once saw in silhouette 

on a lager label

is now a-glitter, 

surrounding vineyards, silent river

statued Mainbrücke

    Residenz, Weindorf

all an easy walk from Marktplatz

Topping the highest hill

proud as the Vatican

and twice as formidable

is what I later learned to be

Festung Marienberg

one-time home of the duke-bishops

Looking up from Leistenstrasse

I am a peasant

unable to imagine the sway

  of whatever majesty 

lives in such a house

Marienberg was a fortress

Michelin explains

a millennium before the Christian comedy

but exhaustive research may not reveal

what bronze-age chieftain

m’lord bishop

or the owner of the brewery

would’ve had to say, when 

just before the War’s end

on a pleasant March day 

eighty percent of Würzburg 

    was demolished 

in a seventeen-minute raid.