Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, REMEMBERING THE CHILDREN OF AUSCHWITZ, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

REMEMBERING THE CHILDREN OF AUSCHWITZ, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We know the story. The children
Last Line: Darkening all our skies
Subject(s): Auschwitz, Poland; Children; Death; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Holocaust, Jewish - Aftermath; Jews; Childhood; Dead, The; Shoah; Judaism


We know the story. The children
Are lost in the deep forest --
Though it is the same forest
In which we all are born.

But somehow it has changed:
A new kind of darkness,
Or something they never noticed,
Has colored the pines and the larches.

And now appears the Bird,
(Bird of a strange dreaming)
To lead them, as tales foretold,
Over the little streams

Into the garden of order
Where trees no longer menaced,
And a little house was protected
Inside its candy fences.

And all seemed perfectly proper:
The little house was covered
with barbwire and marzipan;
And the Witch was there; and the Oven.

Perhaps they never noticed --
After all that disorder
Of being lost -- that they'd come
To the Place named in the stories.

Perhaps there was even peace --
A little -- after disorder,
Before they awoke into
A dream of deeper horror.

And now the Bird will never
Take them across the river
(Though they knew how to walk on water).
They become part of the weather.

They have become the Ascensions.
When we lift up our eyes,
In any light, we see them:
Darkening all our skies.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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