Poets

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz
A Walk through the Warsaw Ghetto

 

In the Warsaw of 1996
rock music pounds
the pavement on Mila street

who is the girl in a bikini
tanning next to the memorial of Anielewicz?
and the woman with a shopping basket
cutting through Umschlagplatz?

the sun shines as before
at the monument to the ghetto martyrs
and the dog barks

humans stroll these grounds
seeking shade while history
smoulders beneath their feet

I stumble on the year 1942:
the air is still on the streets of death
where they have long since built houses
made love and parked cars

life is a museum of oblivion
-- all the way to the trains
where thousands once gathered
to receive the bread and jam of affliction

 

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