NEVER
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/313/1/NEVER/Page1.html
Regina Krummel
Regina Krummel is Professor Emerita, Queens College, City University of New York. She is actively involved in teaching in prisons and will be acting as an individual therapist for a woman in prison. Most recently she has published a book of creative non-fiction, The Underground Woman and a novel Liquorto Casket, Cummings & Hathaway, publishers.By Regina Krummel
Published on 02/23/2005
My daughter said once again,
Write of your childhood...
That tiny apartment
Of oriental rugs
An antique wing chair
A magnificent umbrella stand
Write of your childhood...
That tiny apartment
Of oriental rugs
An antique wing chair
A magnificent umbrella stand
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.
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.