Thread by @komarnyckyj

Gone: A #Holocaust #Poem

Dora and Michael Kohs. Polenaktion 1938, Leipzig.

I see the house opposite my window,
From where you were dragged in 1938
And have no words… the snow falls now

A flotilla of cloud descending from the Baltic

Its feathery incoherence falling on Saxony,
Upon the fields with their cropped wheat,

(I imagine your hair cut short, Michael
Stubble protruding through fresh snow)
Vast with silence the flakes settle,

The train waited for you shunting steam

Light angled through the glass roof
Casting gold rhomboids upon the platform,

So many there who death had not undone
So many in the chill sunlight of Autumn,
Unsure if this was all a dream,

Journeys… my plane landed at Frankfurt
Its wheels parting black curtains of slush,

I feel the silence in my heart. Your mother

Whispering shush child and sleep…
Both your names on the brass plaques
Set in the paving where the snow weeps,

And Germany as you know forgets
And Germany as you know remembers
The promises it breaks and keeps.