Sep 2020
follow the tracks to auschwitz.
do not bother to pretend
you see lights at the end of tunnels,
but the tunnel has an end
if your outer world is barren
grow your garden deep within
there are cruel wolves around us and
we must not let them win
hold on tight to peacetime, carry
every memory like a light
through the marching and the burning
find a reason for the fight
when the stones stand to be gathered
when the cigarette is lit
this suffering is the noble task
to which you must submit
there is work that only you can do,
love only you can give
what does life expect of you?
life expects you to live
do not bother to pretend
you see lights at the end of tunnels,
but the tunnel has an end
if your outer world is barren
grow your garden deep within
there are cruel wolves around us and
we must not let them win
hold on tight to peacetime, carry
every memory like a light
through the marching and the burning
find a reason for the fight
when the stones stand to be gathered
when the cigarette is lit
this suffering is the noble task
to which you must submit
there is work that only you can do,
love only you can give
what does life expect of you?
life expects you to live
We read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in class, the last reading we got to do before lockdown, and it gave me a different way of looking at suffering and why there is suffering in the world. I am not Jewish, and I am in no position to compare anything to the Holocaust, and I will not presume to. Let it not be said that I am saying that having to stay in is on the same level as genocide — I am saying they are two points on the one line, a line of infinite points, and there is something to be learned of survival in the bleakest of conditions, while we survive this and everything else.
