"antisemitism" poems
Todesfugue ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
We’re digging a grave like a hole in the sky;
there’s sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He composes by starlight, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they’ll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come dawn, come midday, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents; he writes...
he writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...”
We are digging dark graves where there’s more room, on high.
His screams, “Hey you, dig there!” and “Hey you, sing and dance!”
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
screaming, “Hey you―dig deeper! You others―sing, dance!”
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...” as he cultivates snakes.
He screams, “Play Death more sweetly! Death’s the master of Germany!”
He cries, “Scrape those dark strings, soon like black smoke you’ll rise
to your graves in the skies; there’s sufficient room for Jews there!”
Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come midnight;
we drink you come midday; Death’s the master of Germany!
We drink you come dusk; we drink you and drink you...
He’s a master of Death, his pale eyes deathly blue.
He fires leaden slugs, his aim level and true.
He writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; Death’s the master of Germany...
“Your golden hair Margarete...
your ashen hair Shulamith...”
Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.
Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, black, milk, drink, vipers, serpents, hounds, grave, graves, golden, hair, Margarete, Shulamith, sing, dance, Death, master, Germany, Nazis, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020 at 11:03 PM UTC
It was a bag of prejudice tied up with strings of judgement. I would know it anywhere. The chill of its indifference never failed to give me nightmares.
Curious thing this is, never curious about the things that tie, a strange fascination with the catabolic, breaking down bit by bit, every standing bridge, till in loneliness, paranoia takes seed.
You call it religion, I call it fanaticism.
You call it ethnicity, I call it a lack of humanity.
You call it antisemitism, I call it disparity.
Diversity versus equality: we know who always wins.
It is always easier to pull apart.
We pull apart a country, a society, sometimes a family just to fit into boxes that do not matter. Whatever doesn't fit we scatter till we are surrounded by blood splatters.
Cannibalism is bad. It is bad to consume but when you destroy the other when you take away their means of life and livelihood, is it any different from taking their lives?
You notice diversity by the differences, not the radiance of their smiles, that does not depend on colour or creed. It is simply a bunch of basic human need.
But you would rather take than provide. You would rather push everyone aside who is not from your own box and then you put yourself behind locks to protect from those you deprive.
Why not for a change simply be alive, appreciate another life?
Why not smile at another smile, irrespective of race, colour or creed?
A new day starts with a new cry for life, every day, around the world, a new beginning.
Let's open our boxes. Let's give away our prejudices and exchange them for compassion. Let's untie the string that ties us to our antiquated narrowmindedness. Let us spread our wings and fly.
(c) Anavah 2018
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 6:33 AM UTC
How long shall they
**** our prophets,
While we stand aside
In hopelessness and look?
Silah., oh sihah oh Silah?
Oh Allah, said the Muslim.
Why lord, asked the Christian,
Shallom said the Jew!
A few of whom knows
What's wrong with the truth.
Wisdom is better than silver
And gold but the jew chooses gold.
This is not antisemitism,
This is the brainchild of capitalism
and the Occidental colonization
Of our minds lands and cultures.
Bob said prophetic things and he
sang revolutionary songs that
resonates to this very day.
We see the zion train every day
but it delivers nothing to us.
It comes empty but leaves
With tons of our resources.
But we ain't got much to say.
We see the smogs from the
Burning coals from its exhaust,
We hear the tots of the soul train
as it comes our way. we see
nothing but gushes of blood as
It seeps into the soil the Dutchmen
Stood on to decapitate the sons
and daughters of Congo.
Courtesy of King Leopold of Belgium.
Bob was right, A thousand years
Of history will not be wiped away!
#IvanBrookspoetry © #Bassapoet
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 4:23 PM UTC
this isn't a callout since he's a minor
but we wanted to warn you of his past actions
we do not believe he will change anytime soon
Trigger/Content warnings:
emotional manipulation, suicide, self harm, r slur, n slur, d slur, r//dsk//n slur, c//ntb//y slur, death threats, grooming, violence, racefaking, blackface, disrespecting boundaries/triggers, misgendering, deadnaming, abuse, sexualization of minors and abusive relationships, cheating, antiblack racism, racism against indigenous people, racism against Asian people, Japanese imperialism, alcohol, underage drinking, transmisogyny, transphobia, intersexism, antisemitism, ******
proceed with caution
happy went to a psych ward when he was 12
he has always struggled with [himself]
i knew he was hurting but not until he lashed out
every year he spent christmas away from home with a basket of clothes
i know he he he he i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i know i
how much could change in just one year
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 at 9:37 PM UTC
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
Cleansings
by Michael R. Burch
Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.
A lentil and a bean might plump their skin
with mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat
(and call it “health”), might quickly build again
the muscles of dead menfolk. Dream, like that,
and call it courage. Cry, and be deceived,
and so endure. Or burn, made wholly pure.
One’s prayer is answered,
“god” thus unbelieved.
No holy pyre this—death’s hissing chamber.
Two thousand years ago—a starlit manger,
weird Herod’s cries for vengeance on the meek,
the children slaughtered. Fear, when angels speak,
the prophesies of man.
Do what you "can,"
not what you must, or should.
They call you “good,”
dead eyes devoid of tears; how shall they speak
except in blankness? Fear, then, how they weep.
Escape the gentle clutching stickfolk. Creep
away in shame to retch and flush away
your ***** from their ashes. Learn to pray.
Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, ashes, crematorium, chimney, smoke, gas, chamber, Auschwitz, starvation, walking dead, mass graves, genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, fascism, cruelty, brutality, inhumanity, horror
Mar 22, 2020
Mar 22, 2020 at 12:08 AM UTC
You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me—
even breath.
Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.
Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, death, breath, abandoned, abandonment, hold, holding, Germany, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
Mar 12, 2020
Mar 12, 2020 at 1:41 AM UTC
O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I’m undermined by blood―
made invisible,
death's possession.
Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else’s eyes
may somehow still see me,
though I’m blind,
here where you
deny me voice.
Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Romanian Jew who wrote poems in German. He survived the Holocaust, despite the loss of his mother and father, to become one of the major German-language poets of the post–World War II era. His parents' deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust have been called the "defining forces" in Celan's poetry.
Keywords/Tags: Paul Celan, Holocaust poems, Holocaust poetry, Shoah, German, translation, root, dream, blood, death, face, eyes, blind, sight, seeing, vision, voice, voiceless, silent, silenced, ardor, love, passion, desire, Germany, abandoned, racism, antisemitism, injustice, brutality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, World War II, world conflicts
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020 at 11:12 PM UTC
She was ninety seven; arthritic, nearly blind,
when a madman with a rifle took her life before her time.
She was praying in the synagogue and, with her dying breath,
She performed a Mitzvah- one that we must not forget.
She fell victim to a hatred that won’t seem to die out.
In Russia there were Pogroms; in Germany, Kristallnacht.
If we thought such hatred was extinct; that the ovens had gone cold
We underestimate the hatred that still smolders in men’s souls.
It sparked to life in Pittsburgh;Eleven lives it claimed.
Antisemitism's ugliness is now our nation’s shame.
As she lay there bleeding, awaiting her own end,
She whispered with her dying breath;
“No Lord, not again!”
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 3:09 PM UTC