Dates

— I —

I am confused by the dates
born of borrowed memories.
Slow is the steady progress
through the calendars that predate me.

On January Sixteen he turned sixteen,
but he would not receive
his present for two more days.
Yes, then it was the Eighteenth,
the time for the gift:

a ride

away, away from the soot
and the cinders married to snow –
every blizzard was doubly dense:
the sight I have never seen,
but clearly recollect,
(the word that really means
collecting again, or it should).

The train departed the camp
and the chimneys were now defunct,
the Red Army entered the site
to examine the grisly find:
the stake the mutant drove
through the body of Polish land.

Sixty Thousand of the not yet dead
were carried at great expense
to a distant secure place
by the philosopher in black dress
who would enter a burning house
to rescue a cat – to drown.

— II —

The dates till the Fifth of May
were garbled, and so were the days:
frost and scurvy claimed this domain,
gums could not hold teeth,
starved minds let go of weeks,
and suddenly it was spring.

It’s not possible to ascertain
whether he was too weak
to climb the flight of steps
called Mauthausen death stairs;
more likely, the guards fled,
while the inmates ate weeds.

No restraints, neither armed nor dogs,
were holding the humans back,
just the skeletons, just the bones
depleted on the diet of grass.

“Wake up, son,”

were the first words
heard in the noon haze,
equivalent to “Let there be light!”
An American Pilot’s course
was plotted through this Austrian land.
He held the live sack of bones.

Three days later a decree was issued,
signifying the end, surrender.
The next day, the Ninth – celebrations,
and the fireworks, vodka and women,
and the dead Sixty Five Millions.
And the hunger that lingered and lingered.

The life with the American Pilot
was heaven: talks of adoption,
meals more sacred than the ancient Temple
sacrifices of the firstborn lambkins.
Corned beef and

the chocolate bars.

All the harder it was to depart,
which he had to, for there was a word,
just one word in the whole world
more hallowed than the survival.
He had to go back, to find her,
his mama.

— III —

..........................He did.
Who knows how he found her?
What matters: the world was recreated,
the great flood of blood had subsided,
the dry land offered school and college
in the shallow shade of olive branches
brought to him by his dove mother.

Short-lived was the repose between the slaughters.
The tyrants are forever restless,
thirst drives them to the dark waters,
for they are bottomless wells
to be filled with the agony, endless.

Eight years after the liberation
of Auschwitz by the Red Army,
Stalin dreamt up a plot by the Jewish doctors
to murder various dignitaries,
Marshals and Commissars;
on the Thirteenth of January Pravdas
carried the news to the nation –

a signal for the great extermination,
the plan for the Jews to perish.
And the trains were already ready
yet again for the Jewish cattle
to be packed and delivered safely
to the ultimate unsafety.

They lived through that too
having been harassed by the uniforms
only once, inquiring
how and why and for what supreme reason
they survived the obliteration
by the Nazis,
which raised KGBish suspicions
of the Jewish collaboration
with their own destructor.

March Fifth, Fifty Three, was an enigma:
the nation’s mourning at the timely departure
of the human pox that this tyrant
was. The Union Soviet
wept on the streets and in private.
Three years later the crimes of the monster
were revealed – just a crack –
to the people. Only then
the young man and his mother
fathomed the depth of the abyss
on the brink of which they were living.

— IV —

I was born on the D-Day,
on the dot, eleven years later.
Maybe that’s why I’m a battlefield
and the sky for the old thunder.
Now I’m closing on fifty –
more time than was given to Moses
to get rid of the guilt of the masses.

I wish to say this to my father:

I am tired of the constant one-upmanship.
Someone always knows more Torah,
or wrote better lines in a story,
or had greater suffering with more casualties.

For years I wanted to apologize
that I was not in Treblinka,
that I was not yet born to be there,
but still I was very sorry,
and if I could only offer
a piece of my flesh as redemption –
I would.

You, a survivor of Auschwitz
and Mauthausen, with no family left,
except mother;
the rest destroyed in Kovno,
be it ghetto or the Ninth Fort,
or Ponary. All my life I heard this story.

No, I wasn’t with them,
forgive me. But maybe I was that baby,
that unborn to whom much of my passion is intended?
For what philosophical reasons,
for what refined indignation
must the eternal victims
rob me?

And isn’t this sadism
to flaunt at me the number,
knowing that there is no answer,
the final trump has spoken
and played out in one-upmanship poker?

Yet, this wholly undeserving
mediocre, insignificant scribbler
had lived his lack of poetry
as an Israeli Air Force officer,
with the “Never again!” as promised,
volunteering for death if required,
protecting your right to insult me.

The generation of the sons and daughters
of the Holocaust survivors
were ordained to failure,
unintentionally and without foresight.
But how can we hope to live up to
the survivors of tattoos and ovens,
how can we not disappoint
when to mention or not
is deadly?

Let’s come out, let’s not dwell in the ovens!
’Tis sufficient, I assure you.
We remember the victims’ stories,
holier than the Ark we hold them,
but now it’s time to be victors.

Pluck the strings of the lute of survival
and of our hard-earned glory;
let our children rejoice, dancing,
let’s remove their restraints, advising,
to ignore all the righteous guilt trips
which are traps, when undressed of their trappings.