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 whod 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.

        

Copyright © Regina Krummel, 2005. All Rights Reserved.