A History of One Day
A HISTORY OF ONE DAY
Seven and the hated buzz assaults my ears,
And in a half-hour I am in metro-hell crowded.
In a glass box, with a thousand pole-hangers loaded,
Each pretending not to see the others.
Then out up the steps of Mauthausen and push
Into an open freezer of darkness and murk,
Dodging ice-patches where treachery might lurk,
Over the bridge cowering from traffic’s rush.
Expending energy all day in voice and limb,
The school is warm and noisy with youth lively
Eroding my scant patience until five, when I tidy
Up their mess gratefully. I’ve had it to the brim.
Someone else, anyone else, sends them to doting parents
To be recharged and re-armed for tomorrow’s erosive assault on me.
Change clothes, cigarette and a small coffee,
Then zombie-like I fall into the crowd across the bridge, spent.
Looking sideways at the ducks in the dark river - bliss! -
Two or three eiders and a mallard, playing carefree,
Scuttling freely about after crumbs under a fallen tree.
The ducks are past now, and we plunge into the abyss -
Down, down, as the chambers of Auschwitz, leading nowhere
With the unseeing pole-thousand in our glass box like rats,
And roar our weary way west to the suburban flats
And flop into an armchair to watch the tv news there
About nothing happening to no one in particular, this day - again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Entered in FRANK H.’s Contest “A History Of One Day”
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