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The Garden of the Dead |
Dedicated to the 15,000 children of Terezín, most of whom
were born in Prague and died at Auschwitz-Birkenau
I. The Jewish Ghetto, Prague
I sit on Maiselova Street, time ticking backwards.
A woman clicks by on high brisk heels. A dog barks.
A weight hushes the Synagogue, dark bricks lick into place.
There is a legend that these building stones were exiled
from the Temple in Jerusalem and that someday,
they will rise borne aloft by the letters of the divine. A song
about children learning the alphabet seeps through the old cemetery,
bodies buried twelve deep. Un der rebe lernt kleyne kinderlekh dem alef-beyz.
A headstone stutters, the letters etch unto bones:
י Yod wisdom, ה He comprehension of all life
and the unity of God, ו Vau answers to all questions posed.
Here’s one:
When Nazi jackboots echoed through the synagogue and words
replicated in the congregation’s blood, were the letters
scrambled by the tongue of pride, the stones strifed by dread,
the teachings profaned and sealed forever?
We are torches of days, trains from our countries
lost in our remembering, we have no simple way
to bridge between earth and dream.
II. The Town of Terezín
I buy cookies at the food stalls, then hop up onto a bus.
Red poppies rein in the road. Fields of blue
are brushed like paint on captured sunlight.
The bus speeds towards a milestone of poplars
a demarcation of kinds or not.
In the town, I slow walk the Square
its trees purpled and roses tamed
a small white one catches my thought.
There are clean buildings. The grocery, the bakery,
the SS headquarters, the barracks done up bright yellow
where the congregations waited. The cemetery is orderly, tempered
by a quarrystone list of contributing nationalities. The crematorium
is closed on Saturdays. In the museum, the guide mentions
his grandfather who cursed Jews for eating children.
On the wall is a poem by a boy* born in 1930. This is what he wrote:
Zahrada mala, pinaruzi voni
A little garden, fragrant and full of roses.
The path is narrow
And a little boy walks along it.
Chlapecek a little boy, a sweet boy,
Like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom,
The little boy will be no more. Chlapecek uz nebude.
III. Auschwitz-Birkenau
In the garden of the dead, exiles weep for eternity
they’ve gone beyond the pale
In the garden of the dead, they've known the depth of lunacy
and hardened on the rail
The silence: wooden buildings in endless rows
towards the fence the red grass grows. A mother
distracts her three year old by picking yellow asters
her small violet shoes knead the ground, come back.
And then there is the railroad track with crossties that cling
to the limestone bed like vomited cookies. With a friend, I walk along it,
our feet awkward with each selected stride. This is too hard, Kate says.
I reply, that is why we must do it.
We are torches of days, trains from our countries
We have no simple way, to bridge between earth and dream.
Let me rewrite history, replace adamantine days with lined faces
slight scored battles of pumpkin cries, legends blued in twilight races.
Listen to the silent rocks, shoots of grass, soaked land, white birches.
I walk the railroad track, hard willed, an echo unyielding, forever.
In the garden of the dead, exiles weep for eternity
they’ve witnessed all the lies
In the garden of the dead, they've seen the depth of lunacy
and know the stones won’t rise
*Frantisek Bass (1930-1944)
copyright 2005
Thea
Iberall |
