NEVER

My daughter said once again,

“Write of your childhood...”

That tiny apartment

Of oriental rugs

An antique wing chair

A magnificent umbrella stand

And a piano.

Refugees crowded our carved couch

I never knew who’d be

In our front living room

A displaced professor

From Warsaw

A musician who fled the Nazis

But had his metronome

I cannot write of this pain

His family was never found

In the scorched rubble

of holocaust remains

A culture destroyed

A language lost as Latin

How did it all begin?

Never...

My father told me

Never write propaganda

Empty, sullen, shallow words

I remain silent

I cannot explore this grief

I am not worthy of the voices

Of the perished.

So “never” remains my theme

I write of stories

New, palpitating horror

My world

Waging another war

Plunder, murder, torture

We scorch another people

A different group

Not my people...

I scream at night

The sweat, the ache

The knowing

The bodies

Carried away

Grief stricken

People waving

Fists at us

“Never,” I said

Never is now.