Poems in Remembrance of the Holocaust
On behalf of the Colorado Poetry Center, the trio of Beth Harris, Judyth Hill and Tina Bueche ran a quite impressive virtual poetry reading in honor of UNESCO's International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27jan22. Itki was the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the complex of German concentration/extermination camps in Poland.
I hope the full video is available at some point. There were many powerful moments and readings by my cohort of impressive fellow readers. But here at this blogspot I wanted to share my script portion of the evening, with the new poem that came out of remembering the Shoah and participating in this important world event.
Dedicated to my dear friends Pamela & John Lifton-Zoline.
Death Fugue
from European poet and Romanian Holocaust survivor
Paul Celan (1920-1970]
Translated from the German by American poet Pierre Joris
Todesfuge
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Black milk of morning, we drink you evenings
we drink you at noon and mornings
we drink you at night
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house
he plays with the snakes
he writes
he writes when it darkens to Deutschland
your golden hair Margarete
he writes and steps in front of his house
and the stars glisten
and he whistles his dogs to come
he whistles his jews to appear
let a grave be dug in the earth
he commands us
play up for the dance
Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you mornings and noontime
we drink you evenings
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house
he plays with the snakes
he writes
he writes when it turns dark to Deutschland
your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamit [Shoo-lah-might]
we dig a grave in the air
there one lies at ease
He calls
jab deeper into the earth
you there
and you other men sing and play
he grabs the gun in his belt
he draws it
his eyes are blue
jab deeper your spades
you there
and you other men continue to play for the dance
Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you at noon we drink you evenings
we drink you and drink
a man lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
he plays with the snakes
He calls out
play death more sweetly
death is a master from Deutschland
he calls scrape those fiddles more darkly
then as smoke you’ll rise in the air
then you’ll have a grave in the clouds
there you’ll lie at ease
Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you at noon
death is a master from Deutschland
we drink you evenings and mornings
we drink and drink
death is a master from Deutschland
his eye is blue
he strikes you with lead bullets
his aim is true
a man lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
he sets his dogs on us
he gifts us a grave in the air
he plays with the snakes and dreams
death is a master from Deutschland
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
Photo courtesy of Jerry Roberts
This famous poem from Israeli poet and Romanian Holocaust survivor
Dan Pagis (1930-1986)
Written in Pencil
in the Sealed Railway-Car
here in this carload
I am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that I
Death Camp
from American-Yiddish poet, lesbian scholar and Warsaw Ghetto survivor
Irena Klelpfisz (1941 to the present)
when they took us to the shower
i saw the rebbetzin her sagging breasts sparse
pubic hairs i knew
and remembered the old rebbe
and turned my eyes away
i could still hear her advice
a woman with a husband a scholar
when they turned on the gas
i smelled it first coming at me
pressed myself hard to the wall
crying rebbetzin rebbetzin
i am here with you
and the advice you gave me
i screamed into the wall
as the blood burst from my lungs
cracking her nails in women's flesh
i watched her capsize beneath me
my blood in her mouth
i screamed
when they dragged my body into the oven
i burned slowly at first
i could smell my own flesh
and could hear them grunt
with the weight of the rebbetzin
and they flung her on top of me
and i could smell her hair
burning against my stomach
when i pressed through the chimney
it was sunny and clear
my smoke was distinct
i rose quiet
left her
beneath
Photo by Vero López
Holocaust
Conceived in war
she was born after the catastrophe
Raised Christian
Stories sprinkled on baptized hair
like holy water. Catechism class
her boot camp
Jesu Christos, they tell her
was, according to the Book, rejected
by the Pharisees. By the Jews
And yet the Haight’s Capt. Barefoot
finds herself celebrating Shabbat
every Friday
Turning distant rites
into family practice. Obedient
to a learned vigil of kinning
Fervent in remembering
the Shoah, that shared WWII story of
yellow-star roundups & gunpoint liberation
She too has seen the arms
tatooed in the algebra of Auschwitz
Skeletons in stripes behind barbed wire
Read of women, children, whole families
boxcar’d & shipped like cattle
to the Nazi factories of ethnic cleansing
She’s staying with the troubles
Not to exceptionalize
since world horrors abound
But to believe and grieve
To conceptualize itki
To see through the media’s cacophony
to the twisted steel plates of a possible future
The architecture of a dozen religious
arguments for a just war
As if, as converts, justice, or just us
could be salvaged from genocide
with a nuclear lock on blocking chaos
As if everybody else’s divinities
were apocalypse zombies. Intent
on dismembering her-him-us
As if the scapegoat infections
of even the healthy were merely
the viruses of evolution
As if the black milk of dawn
rises in the East
Dreaming gold. Drinking ash
As if winnowing
were the only way to assure
the rapture of the species
Photo of Pinwheel Cave Datura by Devlin Gandy
