Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Through the gate
the bones still wear their dresses;
the dust settles on the pile of flaxen hair.

I saw the crows mock the empty earth under the barbed wire,
where the air is thick with submissive footsteps
and total annihilation of worlds.

I saw the fence posts crack the frozen sky,
and the ghost wail of petticoated children
mutilate the February wind.

The brick remembers the needlepoint exhaustion
of the rosy-cheeked babies
-they don't recognize their arms-
and the planks of bunks are worn with squirming.

Mothers give bile, not milk.
Aryan semen dries on thighs.
Bleak desperation in the middle of a frozen field.

Throats clog with the ash falling
from the naked skeletons of the trees.
They cough up uncle, brother,
and know they'll be in the nostrils of the next hour.

I left a hand-print on the ash of the windowpane,
looked through the thumb down at the scaffold and the Wall.

There was a girl in braids who read the exhibition displays.
When photographs of scientific research
held out their arms
she turned around and whimpered into her father's chest.

I had to push through the crowds I could not see
and was caught - a pair of eyes
in a posed tourist photograph.