It Is Raining on the House of Anne Frank 

Linda Pastan 

It is raining on the house

of Anne Frank

and on the tourists

herded together under the shadow

of their umbrellas,

on the perfectly silent

tourists who would rather be

somewhere else

but who wait here on stairs

so steep they must rise

to some occasion

high in the empty loft,

in the quaint toilet,

in the skeleton

of a kitchen

or on the map-

each of its arrows

a barb of wire-

with all the dates, the expulsions,

the forbidding shapes

of continents.

And across Amsterdam it is raining

on the Van Gogh Museum

where we will hurry next

to see how someone else

could find the pure

center of light

within the dark circle

of his demons.