Where poetry fails
Numbered empty suitcases
stacked in a glass case,
tally with lost numbered owners
who did not need luggage at the terminus.
Children’s drawings on yellowing paper
fill captioned panels in a silent classroom.
I do not read the captions – here
there is no need for explanations.
Matchstick figures for once match up
to skinny reality; hanging bodies
sprang from no artist’s imagination;
the bulging eyes of the witnesses
are swollen from sights
where blindness would be a blessing;
girls wash feet in communal sinks
below the “Wasser sparen!” sign.
Only the water was saved.
A violin, hand-scored music,
more paintings, black ink
the only pigment; poems where hope
is not a word in any tongue. Entartete Kunst.
From the walls of the Fourth Courtyard
jackdaws scold us for entering.
In the Group Cells bare bunks for four hundred
line the walls of a room big enough
for forty tourists. Roof lights
admitted summer heat, winter chill,
allowed enough rain through
to soak the floor. No heat in winter,
even in the cold shower blocks.
Thin rough suits, wet from steam cleaning,
were put on again, on wet cold bodies.
I cannot look in the rusted mirrors
of the Shaving Room, afraid of seeing
my reflection against these walls. This room
built for show, in case the Red Cross inspectors
seriously inspected, was never used, never seen.
Six hours, two spent over lunch,
were enough to convince three chaperoned fools
they had seen a model town, no film set;
a place where happy families
lived in peace and whitewashed freedom.
I will not speak of the instruments used
to extract meaningless confessions,
implicating friends in crimes
never committed.
In the Fortress tunnels the murmurs
of fellow sight-seers diminish
to an indistinct mourn. We imagine smells,
assign meanings to stains whose source
we cannot know. Our eyes move nervously
from a gallows in the firing squad yard,
to strands of old barbed wire.
Outside, a family of silent buzzards
stands in the empty turnip field,
resting between rabbits,
as trees unleaf in the drifting drizzle.
To see this is to share survival.
We bear the guilt for those who cannot,
and the pain for those beyond all pain.
I have no relatives here,
but all its dead are kin
in common humanity.
Wherever I go now,
I will not leave this place.
Colin Will
No comments:
Post a Comment