Impressions of Dachau
gus stills
Posts: 366
The bus leaves.
Cloth bucket seats
& wires you pull
to tell the driver of your stop.
A brushed sand & gravel carpet
stretches for miles, endless, numb.
Rows and columns, barbed wire
fences still rusting the color of dried blood.
Towers like swollen tombstones,
thatched roofs & windows.
The hint of what it was like
still breathes like a raspy cough,
caught in cold night air.
You imagine the stifling pain
of the screams, at night, wailing
endlessly in tortured concert.
It begs the question of God,
this place, it begs like a child
searching for lost parent,
clutching at strangers in tears.
On an overcast day, you can
almost imagine what shadows
the sun could cast, hallucinatory.
Barracks without end, lost and dying.
The museum puts pictures to
nightmares—but imagery doesn’t always
convey the justice of an early exit.
These pictures show a small strip of grass
between a gravel walkway & guard towers.
& a body draped like a flag over a fence.
Black and white, but the memory of red
lingers.
Walking through the rows,
it’s easier to put them out of mind
& search inward for faith.
Behind the barracks a thicket of
trees splashes green against the gray,
trying to hide the chimneys racing them
skyward.
Was this the last image?
A small Eden staving off the embers
of Hell?
The wait for the bus is unbearable.
Glancing back to see a hint of green
against the shadowed straightness
of our history, glancing back,
trying to look ahead.
Cloth bucket seats
& wires you pull
to tell the driver of your stop.
A brushed sand & gravel carpet
stretches for miles, endless, numb.
Rows and columns, barbed wire
fences still rusting the color of dried blood.
Towers like swollen tombstones,
thatched roofs & windows.
The hint of what it was like
still breathes like a raspy cough,
caught in cold night air.
You imagine the stifling pain
of the screams, at night, wailing
endlessly in tortured concert.
It begs the question of God,
this place, it begs like a child
searching for lost parent,
clutching at strangers in tears.
On an overcast day, you can
almost imagine what shadows
the sun could cast, hallucinatory.
Barracks without end, lost and dying.
The museum puts pictures to
nightmares—but imagery doesn’t always
convey the justice of an early exit.
These pictures show a small strip of grass
between a gravel walkway & guard towers.
& a body draped like a flag over a fence.
Black and white, but the memory of red
lingers.
Walking through the rows,
it’s easier to put them out of mind
& search inward for faith.
Behind the barracks a thicket of
trees splashes green against the gray,
trying to hide the chimneys racing them
skyward.
Was this the last image?
A small Eden staving off the embers
of Hell?
The wait for the bus is unbearable.
Glancing back to see a hint of green
against the shadowed straightness
of our history, glancing back,
trying to look ahead.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
i've thought that many times, and the answer always came up that there could be no g-d, i find it impossible to believe when i think of all the things like this. your poem really captured the feeling and the image, it's really well written. the image of the 'swollen tombstones' is well thought out, and seems so obvious now that you've put it forth. i've never been to any of the camps in europe, but i did go to one of pol pot's prisons and the killing fields in cambodia, there was still blood on the walls at the prison, and bones sticking through the ground at the fields, it was, as you put it, unbearable, especially after putting yourself in their place, and looking at the pictures of the victims (they were photographed coming into the prison, i never understand why the nazis/khmer rouge documented the inmates so well, it makes no sense, but i'm searching for logic where there is none).
also, i know it's wierd that i'm commenting on this 5 months later, i was searching through this thread for another poem.
anyway, thanks for this.
Albert Einstein
well done.
your writing here took me to a place of lingering sadness.
those places will always contain unbearable negative energy fields.
i couldn't go to those prisons/death camps.
if i did go to see one, that experience would move my soul forever.
quite haunting what humanity has done and will continue to do.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce