Auschwitz, Poland

June 17, 2008

Ground to bits
Under foot
Bits
Bits of bone
I stand on that ground.

Admission paid I walk
Into dank long brick lined quarters
To witness
Governmental obsession,
Legal paranoia
Civil obliteration
Whereby morality was
ground to bits

Body of evidence, Scene one

Behind the glass wall
Piled froths of human hair
Grayed dull with age
Braided piles tossed
Yet to be woven and
Rolled into yards of fabric
To clothe
Murders.

Body of evidence, Scene two

Displayed in heaps
Weathered soles
Leather strapped, and wooden carved shoes
Heels run over
Muddied, filthy, yet
Compulsively matched
Abandoned

Body of evidence, Scene Three

Piled as if left at the airport
Baggage Claim
Leather and cardboard luggage
Possessions, lettered white with hope
Franz, Herman, Elsa,
Lives in suitcases, latched shut
Forever

Body of evidence, Scene Four

Unanimated limbs
Legs, knees, feet
Crutches warped, twisted
Angle iron and wood
Custom fitted for ambulation
Stacked as debris.

Four dioramas stuffed full of human artifacts
As if left only yesterday, not decades ago.
Hope abandoned
Despair beats loud in my ears
My heart empties
I retreat
Down the long dim hallway

Outside, I refill with clean oxygen
My eyes search the sky for space
The horizon
A vista on which to pin
My reality

But
It continues

Body of evidence, Scene Five

The special executions
The Gray wall pocked marked with the ricochet of gunshot
Wood beams lined with hooks to hang hoodless ghosts
Airless cells that gasp misery.
So many bodies shot, hung, and stored
As a butcher’s store of red meat.

Body of evidence, Scene Six

Solid, cold, cement cubicles host
A front portico where
Naked feet gathered to file into
The bunker.

1.5 million noses
Inhale
3 million lungs
Gulp
Paralyzing gas

Body of evidence, Scene Seven

Parallel narrow iron rails
Direct themselves to small fireboxes to
Burn, extinguish, eliminate
Them
The ones who could not fill
The obsession
The ones who became fuel to
The obliteration
The ones, victims of
The fear that required
A final solution

Save the bits.
Bits who screamed and sang
Bits who cried and laughed
Bits who despaired and prayed
Bits who lost and loved

Ground bits
Remains