Rooms and War

In the most interior halls Of grandfather, opa, Herr Uberlebende His mind Behind the film that shrouds his eyes (Fading, opaque, impenetrable) There is a gap between the rooms that line the dusted floors-- A hole between the satanic years When worlds erupted and world war too, Between eight year old boy and that Thirteen year old half-man (His portrait was burned with all the rest, That filled the uninhabitable rooms) A line of broken apartments hide Padlocked, wired, sealed by ghosts. They lie repressed beneath the floors And grandpapa, my dear Has not been to clean them since The doctors taught him they didn’t exist Don’t exist Extract your belongings (We’ll pay your fees) Whitewash the walls— And then you leave. For it would be your death to enter Into those vacant rooms Starved walls Where you, yes you, (Oh Opa, pappy) Emaciated your soul Deprived, you Forsook your abode— When an eight year old Liebling Peering between life and death (Retreating behind his hole in the wall) In his splendid apartment—his very own Looked up At the S.S. poster boy— And Himmler’s devil asked— “Who is home?” And the answer came back, in echoes Echoes “No one, no one is home There is an empty apartment, empty, empty; and no one, no one is home.” Lies come true. Now only echoes and the massacred tread in the purged, forbidden rooms.