#gaunt
Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch
(for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust)
We saw their pictures:
tortured out of our imaginations
like golems.
We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as our disbelief.
They are not
with us now ...
We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,
consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,
buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.
We have
so little left
of them
now
to remind us ...
It was my honor to work with survivors of the Holocaust as we translated their poems and prose accounts into English as a way of preserving them and making them available to larger audiences. Unfortunately, time waits for no one and the Holocaust survivors I worked with are no longer with us. But their words and testimonies remain, if we will only take the time to read and consider them. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, victims, survivors, mass graves, pictures, images, tortured, frail, gaunt, skeletal, emaciated, thin, malnourished, golemic, horror, terror, inhumanity, madness, racism, antisemitism, slave labor, slavery, death camps, concentration camps, gas chambers, ethnic cleansing, genocide, memory, remembrance, memorial, tribute
Feb 29, 2020
Feb 29, 2020 at 4:16 AM UTC
Hello to you, and you and you, what can I do today
I see what you want, it's ghastly and gaunt, and I think you should just go away
What do you mean, you think that it's keen; it's awful and I can't abide
I think you should hurry, and please, please scurry, get out, your want is denied
We all have our views and yours made me choose, to ask you to leave me alone
I know you meant well, but I bid you farewell to move on to a better unknown
Brian Hill - 2019 # 219
Aug 28, 2019
Aug 28, 2019 at 8:23 AM UTC