Category Archives for 2011

Arbeit Macht Frei

This is the arch that set us free.
Those years ago, its open gates
Admitted enemies that would
have brought us to our knees.

Now we are here in thanks for all
their suffering. Such sacrifice of innocence
our own made here for ours. Gave up
their chance of iron at the throat,

Of making an heroic end, to
make the toughest choice of all:
To make the living from the dead.
We knew their minds. And home they came

To us. In sleep they called. They saw
and took those lives. Such brutal ends
were just, but tested men whose hearts
were better brazed by war. And such souls

They were, to even sometimes see beneath,
a common breath and need to live.
Such brave humanity. It’s just: they’re gone:
we come to this their final shrine

For now our continent is clean
We stand here on the monument
Our Fatherland decreed should mark
The paying of that debt to Christ

The final victory of our purer blood
over all those outcast tribes that spelled,
conspired and sought with slavs to bring
us down. So stand in years of peace

That brought, and look about a landscape
That is now filth free. And name them
not, that is the leader’s last decree.
But stand here on the ramp such ends

were wrought with cleansing gas and fire.
See where their ugly history perished
from the earth, and gave to us release –
And think what work it was that made us free.

From a Poland Train

The stench of our train in the darkness.
An angry fire consumes poor coal,
the needles shake and shiver, steam
escapes from worn out valves. We are
delivering, but are no express. I wipe
a gauge: a tear of condensation offends
a tidy footplate. The fireman, who, thanks
to war and careless rostering, I do not
know, leans back, resites his cap.
A tender moment, shovel propped.
His throat is full. Expertly, he rolls
the blackened phlegm and spits
it to the night, then checks the firebox.
Momentarily transfixed, the burst
of light records a figure trapped in hell,
then vanishes with a clang of steel.
On time, I utter. The watch that was
My father’s put away. No matter what
the load, the line’s end, or how long
the wait while other transports clear
the ramp, we will be there as scheduled.
Jews! I hear my father’s voice again, the
pounded Sunday fist, the engineer’s skilled
hand bunched in hatred of a race that killed
his Lord. We have them now. Their stench
is what we trail across this land.
Justice. My father’s hand was hard
enough to beat his sinless sons as well.
We take on water, at some Polish halt
that only needs a decent German name
to make it whole again. I  listen to the
boxcars’ groans, the slow and mournful
songs, the pleas for what I cannot understand.
I thank God I am no sentimental woman,
for you too would weaken at the thought
Of what we do, that must be done.
We do not linger. This final night will take
them to the ramp beyond the arch. Then peace
for them, and rest for us. I’d get this ancient train to
give more speed, and help them on their way
if it was not too old, and only fit for scrap.
We are not cruel. It is for all the best.
This ends in morning, for a world they helped
to make, and which now demands a final sacrifice.