Here is a selection of Liberarte poems for Holocaust commemoration.
These and others from the anthology were read at our May 1, 2016 Yom Hashoah commemoration at Temple Israel of Boston.
|
Sketch for Terezin
by Rita Dove breathe in breathe out that's the way in out left right where did we leave from? when do we stop leaving? * This far west, summer nights cool off but stay light, blue-stung, long after sleep lowers its merciful hammer. * breathe left breathe right one two in out * There will be music and ice cream and porcelain sinks. carts of bread for the looking; choirs and gymnastics. I get to carry the banner. * that's the way keep it up in out in out where did we leave from when did we stop leaving * I was a girl when I arrived, carrying two pots from my mother's kitchen. It was October, growing crisp, my sweater soft as cream cakes, my braid blonder than the star stitched across my heart. * breathe breathe that's the way left right left right left right * no one asks what village I am from though I look out from its leaf-green eyes no one asks if I remember how the butterflies startled, churning up lemony clouds no one else nears the river chafing its banks the one road singing its promises going out * when did we leave from when did we stop leaving * if I am to become a heavenly body I would like to be a comet a streak of spitfire consuming itself before a child's upturned wonder |
Child Survivor's Testimony
by Richard Berengarten I'm alive because in the middle of the shooting my father said, Go. He let go of my hand and pushed my back like this and said Go, in an ordinary way as if he was telling me what to do, as usual. Go, he said. It didn't feel special. He didn't say Run or Go quick, or Hurry. But he turned his face away to my mother. I walked away slowly, Nobody noticed. That's why I'm alive. Poems © Mark Ludwig, Terezin Music Foundation. All rights reserved. For permission to reproduce in any form please contact Terezin Music Foundation at 857-222-8262. |
Doaa
by Carol Dine Dreaming, we stepped onto a trawler in the Nile. Two teens escaped from Syria among five hundred who'd traded in everything they had for passage to Europe: Sudanese, Palestinians, Libyans. Days later in the deep, a darkness circles us; the unnamed ship rams our stern. I hear moaning, splashing, listen for the voice of my beloved. I cry out his name. Now I am drowning in black water, trying to remember his face. Has it been two nights? In the dark, drifting by, flashes or orange. I pull a vest toward me. Near me, a man showed to succumb; he stops treading, goes under, At dawn, nothing but ocean. Others leave me pieces of themselves: A grandfather, shivering, kisses his granddaughter, passes her to me. A mother hands me her infant son like a bundle of foam, takes her last breath. In the rising sun, the dead float around me in their ghost flesh, their eyes, red glass. For three days, I twist in the churning sea, in the shadows of low clouds. I am weightless but for the babies I carry, tucked into my vest. They cry, I sing to them: Sleep, sleep, for your pillow, I give you a pigeon until our rescue somewhere near Crete, a cargo ship sent by Eleos, goddess of mercy. |
