Robert Bertram Knecht

Who was I?
All my life I was told
My name was Robert Bertram Knecht.
Knecht...Knecht? From where did
The title Knecht arise?
Never having known my father I wondered.
The people I love were caught
In a whirlpool of silence.
Grandma Roberts held me in her lap,
Babbling on about her useless love for me,
Always evading the question.
My mother I was afraid to ask,
Always drinking Satan's parody of Living Water.
The questions of the innocent might have
Triggered it to consume her.
Why is scandal silenced?
Protection was their intent
Yet silence is a traitor,
And pain the result.
My own children wondered, they sat in my lap.
I simply stared at them.
The lesson of silence passed on,
Myself powerless to stop it.
Secrets die with the dead,
Unless young ears strain beneath the dust
To hear the truth of the past.

Prince Knecht

Eleven known children I had.
Respectable, honorable, of the high class,
Such would make one a proud father,
One would think.
One was unknown to the world.
Hidden from shame and dishonor.
Unfortunate Louis I in generations passed,
Left me the inheritance of poor judgment.
His was Irish; mine Russian.
The fruits of our love were a threat to my throne.
I had no choice, no other escape,
But to send Robert to ripen or rot
Under the shadow of Lady Liberty.
I had to be a leader,
My country demanded my talents,
The Triple Alliance - though not
Triple for long - required my aid.
Or so I told myself.
Lady Luck cursed my sin,
She desired different for me.
The Schlieffen failed and Kaiser fell.
I sacrificed my unknowing flesh and blood
For an ultimately deteriorated and humiliated land.
Long decades later remorse remains
In the marrow of my bones
For the one I was not allowed to love.

Claire Rupprecht