No tags yet.
After Auschwitz
I am vague I am hazy I am indistinct
I am bodiless-
but my black Romani blood river runs
boils and bubbles and
pushes up Piotr’s daisies
I am faceless-
but my non-Aryan features glow searing hot
my crippled mouth and communist eyes
coal to cinder
fuel to Himmler’s furnaces
the fog of my Jewish bones
blurs Wladyslaw’s farmhouse
my homosexual tongue a licking lapping flame
a hideous gape, a burning yawning mask
my embers smolder in the wake of the Zyklon B
that fumigated my lungs
and left me breathless, voiceless, mute.
Silent.
…so I am nameless…
I am vague I am hazy I am indistinct
Write me, Paul Celan
-your neighbor from Czernowitz
Write me, Nelly Sachs
-your neighbor from Berlin
Write me, Miklós Radnóti
-your neighbor from Budapest
Give me a body and fill me in and grant me life.
Birth me-
for oblivion awaits
Birth me-
lest I disappear
from the awareness of humanity
into the amnesia of history
…vapor and ash…
Adorno was wrong - there must be poetry.
Write me.
_______________________________________________________________________
This poem first appeared in Voices Israel 2015 and is included in my chapbook from Finishing Line Press.
You can order the book on Amazon.com or here:
Windows and a Looking Glass by Deborah Kahan Kolb