Waiting at a Station

Imagine yourself meat shoved into an oven

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Mutual suffocation from human gasses

Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens

Body heat raging from ten-to-the-dozen

Brown paper packages tied-up with string

And two-per-square-foot of us are heaps of molasses

These are a few of my favourite things

Waiting at a station; a platform and a sign

A cattle truck of luggage and carcasses

Gasping for air and begging for water

A soldier came by and offered to trade

He took money and jewels - mother's diamond ring

These were nothing to throats as dry as a blade

And desiccated lives that were deaths to be made

He pocketed our payment and moved off down the track

"Yes, yes! I'll bring you water," he jovially said

But he never came back

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

You could never tell children who just want to play

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

The past is the past and has nothing to say

Silver white winters that melt into springs

I'll journey with the future, but never by train

These are a few of my favourite things

And I'll live for the present, for it never comes again

Reviews

[Crowley]

Christ....dude you made me tear up on this one....is that what you wanted? Not gonna stop until Rowley cries? This is so perfect and so sad, and so cool and so so good. This is a winner my friend, this above all needs to get out to the masses, I so wish to hell I would have came up with this, but I am not good enough. Master class is now in session. I bow and surrender my f*****g pen.

[Alicante lullaby]

i dont know how to review..specially when someone's every write is my favourite...holocaust is a sensitive issue so are Nagasaki,Baghdad and Herosheema and Kabul and Palestine..some are directly related to us ,some not but its pain that's common and palpable..

[Marianne]

The reality of this past occurrence felt like a punch to my gut...I feel physically sick and usually refrain from being confronted by these atrocities, which nevertheless should never be forgotten !
May I humbly say your writing here is BRILLIANT....word for word, line by line, stanza by stanza.

'The past is never really past'.

[Robin]

jeez jennie how am I supposed to write after reading this ....

painful as it is, this is art

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

goddamn. my god.. this is so..

jesus christ.. you have actually made me cry with this. the interplay of the "sound of music" song (also apt given THEIR (the von trapp's) story) with the reality of the horror the "travelers" are experiencing.

f*****g hell i'm all fumbly and stupid in my need to express what this is to me.

my mother was adopted by jewish grandparents, and my bubbe (great-grandmother) escaped from Poland through the mountains as a 14 yr old girl. i cried as an 8 yr old listening to her story.. and i cry again, now.

you've captured the inhumanity of man, and the animal fear and uncertainty of people reduced to pure survival instinct.

bravo, Glyn.. i mean it. this is astonishing and i am completely undone