Wish I could be here
Really here
In the here and now
And just live every second.
If only they were a bit bigger
I could reach out
And grab one again
Like I did when I was younger.
I'd seen it, just floating
Going nowhere
So I caught it then ran back home,
A whole second in my sweaty  fist.
It didn't appreciate being stuffed
Into a jar
It wanted it's freedom back
To be limitless, to be anything
Anywhere, anytime again.
Anyway, it managed to unscrew the lid,
In the morning it was gone,
Taking half of my years with it.

my imagination
suffers from excess
yesterday in a dream
I said that I sleep
I ordered personalized matchboxes
I saw the sea
in a plate from soup
I heard how a baton
conducts the conductor
I saw a breast
****** by a child
I uncovered a naked surgeon
on my operating table
and I recognized the voice of ******
among those gassed in auschwitz

by Volker W. Degener translated from the German by Adam A. Zych with Andrzej  Diniejko
from The Auschwitz Poems an anthology edited by Adam A. Zych

It's possible to look on the world
through:
the magnifying glasses of wonder
the diminishing glasses of despair
through fingers, through tears
the black-, the blue-, and rose-coloured spectacles
through a keyhole
the piece of glass for observation of sun-eclipse
the barrel of a rifle
and through thousand hollow-glasses
of the Auschwitz-Museum.

by. Henryk Jasiczek translated from the Polish by Adam A. Zych

I wish I could make returning
home feel like a gentle burial

I don’t want to be
reminded of the time

Don’t stare at my empty wrists,
I have lost my watch long ago

But I’m still here, always here,
so is the lump in my throat

Before the night ends, and we
make our soon to be last goodbyes

Ask me to stay,
don’t let me return to my grave again

Because, I fear I won’t be
able to leave it this time

I long to remain dead,
but ask me anyway