You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

Easter Monday (2015)


The silence
It was the silence
As we entered the gates of hell.
Then…
The bird song,
It was the bird song
That chorused our way
To the well
Of tears at the wall
Of many tongues
That speak to the silence still,
Of the voices that cried
For the people who died
The void only time will fill.

The sun
It was the sun
Shining on the wooden cross.
And…
The sky
It was the sky
So blue, and flecked with the floss
Of clouds so white
So pure in light
That the wall of the well of tears
Transfigured the sin
We heap on Him
Whose loss for many
Is the only way
To feel the void time fills.

The woodpecker drummed a beat
On the trunks
Of the trees so parallel still.
A whisper of wind
That rebounds the sound
Of innumerable roll calls
Of the thousands who now
Lie deep in the cradles of mounds
Stone faced, inscribed Toten
With the number interred within
Verboten… now
But why not then?
In that world of men
And women, when humanity’s meaning
Was turned on end.
And a godless creed
That shadowed the world with grief
Which now for many,
Is beyond belief.

The stillness
It was the stillness
That gave silence the space to breathe,
To remember the times, the godless times
That now are so hard to believe.
But silence and stillness envelope the House
A silent place to be
To hear the past that shows the present
The prayers for a future that sees
What could be,
What can be
But will we
Learn, the history from then to now
To forge that future for future’s sake
And answer the question…
How?

David Applin
… late afternoon and evening of Easter Monday 6th April 2015 following a visit to Bergen-Belsen earlier in the day, completed 7th-9th April.

15th April 2015 … 70 years after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army.

David Applin (Copyright 2015)

An Epithaliamium

So Man, grown vigorous now,
Holds himself ripe to breed,
Daily devises how
To ******* his seed
And boldly fertilize
The black womb of the unconsenting skies.

Some now alive expect
(I am told) to see the large,
Steel member grow *****,
Turgid with the fierce charge
Of our whole planet's skill,
Courage, wealth, knowledge, concentrated will,

Straining with lust to stamp
Our likeness on the abyss-
Bombs, gallows, Belsen camp,
Pox, polio, Thais' kiss
Or Judas, Moloch's fires
And Torquemada's (sons resemble sires).

Shall we, when the grim shape
Roars upward, dance and sing?
Yes: if we honour ****,
If we take pride to Ring
So bountifully on space
The ***** of our long woes, our large disgrace.

Dalya argues
with the German,
but she understands
nothing he says.

Fick dich?
What's that mean?
She asks me.

Best you don't know.

Is he swearing at me?

I nod.
The German walks off;
his broad shoulders swinging.

Who does
he thinks he is?

German, I guess.

She gestures
with her middle digit
at his departing back.
What did he say?
She asks.

Guess.

Sounded rude.

The German guy
has gone around a corner.
(I am glad).

We walk
to the next café
and sit at a table
near the window.

A waitress
takes our order
and walks off
to the back,
her hips swaying
her black skirt.

He was in the wrong,
Dalya says.

Guess he
didn't think so.

But he was
and his attitude stank
and he was **** ugly.

She foams at the mouth;
her eyes are bright
and full of anger.

Life's too short.

Short or long
that Square Head
was in the wrong.

I look at her
sitting there;
the hair drawn tight
in a bun
at the back
of her head;
her jaws rigid.

She smells
of cheap soap
and cigarettes.

If I was a man,
I’d have thumped him.

If you had been a man
he'd have thumped
you first.

The waitress
brings our order
and puts out
the coffees
and cream cakes,
then smiling at me,
she walks off,
swaying again.

I imagine;
thinking of
another place
and time.

Fick dich, to him, too,
she says,
stirring her coffee.

I imagine he might.

What?

Do as you request.

She looks at me,
her eyes focusing on me
like an eagle at prey.

And to think
they thought they
were a superior race.

Human error, I suppose.

They weren't;
I had relatives
gassed in Belsen.

She looks away;
her eyes watery;
lips drawn tight.

That's not down to race,
that's down
to human folly
and wickedness.
I had a friend
whose father helped
clear out Belsen;
he was in the army;
****** his head,
I say.

She says nothing;
silence descends
and caresses us
in its cold arms;
breathing in our ears.

I look at her;
eyes full of tears.

The year was nineteen forty six, the memories still raw,
Europe’s Jews were still encamped as they had been before.
True, they now had food to eat and decent clothes to wear,
But in that Displaced Persons camp, little else to spare.

When Lilly told her fiancé about her dream one night;
her standing beneath the chuppah in a flowing gown of white,
Ludwig promised Lilly that her vision would come true,
but in a displaced person’s camp that might be hard to do.

A former Luftwaffe pilot proved an angel in disguise;
Ludwig traded, for his parachute, some coffee and supplies.
Miriam, the seamstress, swore to do her best
to fashion the silk parachute into a wedding dress.

Some miles from Bergen Belsen lies the little town of Celle
Its desecrated synagogue would serve the couple well.
They made an Aron Kodesh from a kitchen cabinet
A Rabbi, flown from England, would officiate their fete.


Lilly’s gown was beautiful, the bride felt like a Queen
Within the battered synagogue, her wedding matched her dream.
Miriam’s creation would be worn by many more;
Girls from camp made brides in white that year after the war.

The Gown’s in a museum now, the bride now old and gray.
She lives nearby in Brooklyn in a house down by the bay.
Her lovely great granddaughter, her loving heart’s delight,
now has the dream of being wed in a gown of flowing white.

three of four funerals
gun collection, gun
long narrow boxes in the trunk of my first car

Dad’s dad, Bergen-Belsen, babbling
Dad’s mom, floorboards
Mom’s dad, collectibles
Mom’s mom, alcoholic

obituaries, guns, boxes, garages
adults, guns, St. Peter, Joni

Dad’s dad, lessons, dreams
Dad’s mom, cabbage recipe
Mom’s dad, extra hugs
Mom’s mom, low blows

memories, value, months
A pawn shop good rate
moral boundaries:
kids on the street, no parents

I speak of fear, sheer limbic,
Reptilian fear, and there’s the rub:
Obliterate thought and all that’s left is fear,
And fear’s known associates & cronies:
Hunger, Thirst, *** & everything else
Triggering our amygdale nether brains,
Each synapse a single primal scream,
Rich Reichian fodder and sacrificial yawp,
Whitman’s bleating syllable, straight bedrock,
Down low on the Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Abraham Maslow: another shrewd Jew from
Brooklyn, New York. Atta boy Abe:
Adrenaline pure and simple,
An instinct for survival.
I suppose my only regret in life,
Was that I was not old enough to be
A victim of the Holocaust.
I mean nothing facetious or disrespectful by this.
(Like Jesus, I was born a Jew.)
All I mean is that a stint at Auschwitz or
Bergen-Belsen, might have done wonders for me,
Saving me much time, given the number of books
I’ve read on the subject, just trying to get my heart &
Mind around the throat of evil.
My story is truth, not science fiction.
Yet, I confess to having some difficulty
Discerning the difference lately.
Perhaps this is why my mind wanders.
That’s probably what I love best about Stanley Kubrick—
Another insightful New York Jew.
His vision of space, namely the shrewd perception,
That after 5,000 years of recorded human history,
It was going to be difficult.
It would be a challenging enterprise,
Noodging the human race to choose,
A more cerebral path;
A state of mind & brilliant grace,
Embrace a kinder, fearless self and future.
Kubrick understood he must first take us to Odulvai,
Our primal anthropological killing fields,
Then he could transport us to outer space.
Only then, could we evolve,
Adapt to cooperation and tolerance,
Shift our future focus,
Our natural and spiritual resources,
Our potential.
Collaboration not competition.
2001: A Space Odyssey: released
A year before the Apollo program
Put a man on the moon, five years
Before the space station Skylab.
Kubrick’s gift to mankind was a clear new perspective:
Man in space looking back at a very small holistic Earth,
And an infant self, both diminished,
Made insignificant in a vast cosmic context.
Other forces were at work, of course,
Lying in wait as always, global forces
Co-opting the vision, drowning it in an old
Unabashedly mercantile reality.
That Darwinian old world order,
Again, reducing human existence
To an economic absurdity.
Globalism: the scariest Bond villain yet.

I walk across
to Hannah's flat
in Arrol House
and knock at the door

Mrs Scott opens
the door and stands there
she's a short thin woman
with a face of granite
with a slit
where her mouth is

whit is it?
she says
her Scottish accent
rough as stone

is Hannah home?
I ask

I dunnae kinn
she replies
HANNAH
she bellows
over her shoulder
Benedcit is haur fur ye
she adds
scowling at me

jist coming
Hannah replies
from back in the flat

yoo'll hae tae bide
Mrs Scott says

and walks back inside
leaving me
on the red tiled step

I look into the interior
of the flat
and smell breakfast
having been cooked

I look back
into the Square
kids are playing
near by
on the pram sheds
and over by the wall
girls are doing handstands
their feet
against the wall
dresses falling
over their heads
showing underwear

sorry about Mum
she has a mouth on her
Hannah says
where we going?
she asks

thought we'd go
to the South Bank
see the Thames and boats
and have ice cream
I say

do I need money?
she asks

just about 2/-
I say
for bus fares
and ice cream

I'll ask Mum
for a handout
but wait for the answer

Mum have you 2/-
I can have?
Hannah asks

fa dae ye hink
Ah am Rockerfeller?
nae Ah huvnae
her mother replies

no problem
I say to Hannah
I'll have enough
for us both

are you sure?

yes don't aggravate
your mother more
than you have to

so Hannah gets her coat
and we walk off
through the Square

she's like that sometimes
Hannah says
she's as tight
as a wing nut

we walk down the *****
and up Meadow Row

I ask her how her father is

she says
he's Ok but in
the doghouse more often
as not with Mum
but he's a softy
to Mum's hardness
but Mum says
he's soft in the heed
but he's lovely really
Hannah says

-I know her old man
he's English and a bit
simple after helping
to empty out Belsen camp
in 1945 where some
he told me were
more dead as alive-

we wait at the bus stop
she with her dark hair
pony tailed
with a tartan skirt
and white blouse
and me in blue jeans
and white shirt
and quiff of brown hair
and hazel eyes

she with a budding beauty
with her mother's
touch of tongue
who if roused
could give words
full lung.

You do not do, you do not do  
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot  
For thirty years, poor and white,  
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.  
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,  
Ghastly statue with one gray toe  
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic  
Where it pours bean green over blue  
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.  
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town  
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.  
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.  
So I never could tell where you  
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.  
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.  
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.  
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna  
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck  
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.  
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.  
Every woman adores a Fascist,  
The boot in the face, the brute  
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,  
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot  
But no less a devil for that, no not  
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.  
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,  
And they stuck me together with glue.  
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.  
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,  
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you  
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart  
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.  
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I’m through.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

-sylvia plath 1932 -1963

~
Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.

In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.

Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.

The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.

Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."

Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.
~