Burial

A poem from the point of view of a Jewish child born in hiding during the Holocaust.

There’s so many things

Of which I could tell

Dark and depressed

Tales of hell.

But I choose to bury

Those words inside

My mind’s a grave

And these are the bodies I hide.

The world outside,

It’s all at war.

“Stay in here,”

My mother says

“Away from all the blood and gore.”

So I’m caged,

A docile pet.

A lion that should be out hunting

But is eating vegetables instead.

“They’ll kill you!”

The voices on the outside whisper.

The monsters they speak of

Prowl on the outside,

Uniformed and stiff

Looking for my people

And if they find us,

Horrors, they will upon us inflict

The ones who help,

Our saviours out in the light-

I know not who they are,

And my family says

We shouldn’t;

We should pretend they don’t exist.

I was born down here,

I’ve never seen the bright:

The only thing I can count on,

That’s constant here, aside from the dark

Is when they open that door

In will reach fingers

Handing us all plates

Then the hands which feed me

Disappear

Swallowed by the effervescence

From which they appeared;

Leaving my family

To decay here

Trapped within our abyss of fear.

“At least it’s safe here for everyone,”

My relatives insist,

More to reassure themselves

Than the rest of us.

But when all’s said and done,

I wonder if we’ll ever leave

Even after

The war’s been won.