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Open Poetry #44
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Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan

0 posted 2009-04-21 08:34 PM


.


A hank of hair
What an odd
Phrase that

You would think
People being gassed
Would have such courtesy
As befits a poem

Still
There’s that blue ribbon
Among the strands
As deserves
A line or two

It can’t be said
Of course
They died well
Yet still
That little girl . . .

Let’s put our pens
To paper between the lines
And make something
Worth the while . . .


.
.

© Copyright 2009 John Pawlik - All Rights Reserved
WTBAKELAR
Deputy Moderator 1 Tour
Senior Member
since 2008-09-09
Posts 1089
Utah, USA
1 posted 2009-04-21 08:40 PM


John,  This is very powerful.
Take not lightly, histories painful truths.

Very well done.
Tracey

Juju
Member Elite
since 2003-12-29
Posts 3429
In your dreams
2 posted 2009-04-21 08:43 PM


Sad.  You always have a way of bringing images with out forcing imagery.  Very good.

Juju

-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

Osprey
Member
since 2009-04-12
Posts 249

3 posted 2009-04-21 08:58 PM


The most difficult of subjects, treated with delicacy and respect.
Robert E. Jordan
Member Rara Avis
since 2008-01-25
Posts 8541
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
4 posted 2009-04-21 09:20 PM


John,

That subject was covered well by Anthony Hecht in his "The Book of Yolec":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41307-2003Oct30?language=printer

The Book of Yolek

Wir haben ein Gesetz,

Und nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben.

The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal

Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk

Down the fern trail, it doesn't matter where to,

Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,

And among midsummer hills have set up camp

In the deep bronze glories of declining day.

You remember, peacefully, an earlier day

In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:

A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.

That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;

More than you dared admit, you thought of home;

No one else knows where the mind wanders to.

The fifth of August, 1942.

It was morning and very hot. It was the day

They came at dawn with rifles to The Home

For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal

Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk

In close formation off to a special camp.

How often you have thought about that camp,

As though in some strange way you were driven to,

And about the children, and how they were made to walk,

Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day

Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal

And shamble between armed guards to his long home.

We're approaching August again. It will drive home

The regulation torments of that camp

Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,

The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,

The quite extraordinary heat of the day

They all were forced to take that terrible walk.

Whether on a silent, solitary walk

Or among crowds, far off or safe at home,

You will remember, helplessly, that day,

And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp.

Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.

His unuttered name will interrupt your meal.

Prepare to receive him in your home some day.

Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,

He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.

(Anthony Hecht's "The Book of Yolek" appears in his "Collected Later Poems." Alfred A. Knopf. Copyright © 2003 by Anthony Hecht.)

It's one of my favorite poems.

This poem of your is also very fine.

Bobby

[This message has been edited by Robert E. Jordan (04-21-2009 10:48 PM).]

critical mass
Member
since 2009-03-25
Posts 275
Michigan
5 posted 2009-04-21 10:33 PM


Powerful poem.

You would think
People being gassed
Would have such courtesy
As befits a poem

Most powerful stanza in the poem.

CM

unboundpoetess
Member
since 2008-05-24
Posts 477

6 posted 2009-04-21 11:08 PM


Knocked my socks off, of course.
Amazing how you always blow me over with a feather.

Heather


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