poetry 11 : Write it. Write. In ordinary ink on ordinary paper.
Hunger Camp at Jaslo
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don't know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."
On this 11th day of April, a photograph from the liberation of Buchenwald on the 65th anniversary of that day. Among all these knowing faces, the one we know best for his work after leaving that camp is that of Elie Weisel who is 7th from the left on the second row from the bottom.
Matched with a poem about another camp, both reminding us of the capacity of man's inhumanity to man. And of the capacity to survive. And of the space that poetry holds open for us to see into history, into despair, into the eyes of men and women who perished, and those who lived.
Perspective, it has been said, is worth 80 IQ points. What atrocities are we now allowing that will, in sixty-five years' time, appear as inhuman, inhumane, evil?
Day 11 of National Poetry Month.
