Oswiecim

for those 62 and not 70

Tomorrow I shall apologize

to the one at the store house/ you know him

the one who places figurines in that possessive case,

carries around with him the guilt of being born later,

in the 50's when the smoke and the ashes had rested

on the Polish hilltops. He showed me, and I read

one of the poems he wrote and it was fucked up

but beautiful. The  way the same river that  crests at the

issuance of dawn can drown a child. Can capsize a boat.

Can keep a doe, cut off from it's mother, from crossing;

from believing the worst, yet not ever  the

unthinkable.

Reviews

[Beccy]

Truly outstanding poem. It is both an indictment of the savagery of man, especially to our own kind; yet somehow, that line, f********* up but beautiful, makes it, (at least to me,) a celebration of all that is good in us.

How is that we can create such beauty, yet destroy without compunction?


Beccy.

[Lyn Anderson]

Survivor guilt, but more than that, the guilt of not having lived it. We can learn much from those who did.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

when we are too young to have experiences some things, we cannot imagine the worst...we cannot imagine how bad things were once, born in the 50's we have viet nam memories, civil rights movement---detroit riots...the draft, ---and then there are those born after what happened at the concentration camps...the smoke and ashes are left and we write about them if that is all we have as mementos...

this is such a strongly moving poem, dana.
jacob