Little birds spill onto the gravel
Chirping with disoriented confusion.
A spindly flock warbling
“Mère! Mère!”
Through cracked lips and bony beaks.
Hawks circle indifferently
Unfamiliar with the call
But acquainted with the cry.
The scarecrows converge,
Singing their songs of
Reunion across the river.
Seductive assurances and
Dry straw lies
Come together when
Hopeful lines form
For a mère poule promise.
Across that green field
The boathouse beckons,
Under late summer boughs
Alive with blossoms.
Across that green field
The boatman waits.
Categories:
drancy, history, holocaust,
Form: Free verse
Gabriel A. Levicky
A DEAD TYPEWRITER
OR
1000 + 1 JUDEN VERLASSEN*
Here I go again!
The not-so blind date
With history
Narrowed my and-I-thought-they-have-seen-everything eyes.
All I can touch
Is
A paper, a report
Blown in from the past.
Everything else becomes a crippling echo.
Paris 9.4.1942
To
Berlin.
Attention: Eichmann.
Time: 8:55 am, transport # D901/23
From Le Bourget-Drancy to Auschwitz
With 1000 Jews
Has been just dispatched.*
Each Jew received 2-week provisions.
Please confirm.
Neatly typed Pica letters report.
On a polished typewriter,
A victim of war,
Now long dead.
The earth is not round yet
And
It is not turning.
Only the past is rotating, whirling
In the autumn park carousel.
Now you feel it.
Now you don’t.
NYC, October’ 01
*Based on the found written report dated 9/4/1942, sent at 10:30 AM by an anonymous Nazi officer stationed in Paris
to Eichmann
in Berlin
Categories:
drancy, political, autumn,
Form: Free verse