| Harps Three Holocaust Poems
1. DEPORTATION The people they've lived with in the village are being herded in front of closed portals, still and silent each. The fences would conceal all sight, all feelings, except for the tea-rose, the violet and weed leaping through to reach out towards them. 2. IN THEIR PLACE: A DAUGHTER My daddy's lost children: Eve and little Joe. My mummy's lost children: Stevie and little Paul. My daddy's marriage, a legendary love match. But mummy mourned at every river - I know she wished to die. My daddy declared: his parents' graves lay here. And mummy declared that people should not forsake their parents' final resting place. And thus they merged their equal losses, although at first it was only beneath the canopy for the law took its time to confirm the death of mummy's husband and daddy's wife. Mummy wanted no children after Stevie and little Paul; but after Eve and little Joe, my daddy yearned for babies more and more. That is why I am here. I was named after daddy's late daughter. I live in their place. My mourning father was 54 years of age and my mother was 42 when I was born. 3. LET YOUR PEOPLE... Let Your people perish, my Lord: take pity upon Your own, I entreat You. Let the basket of bulrushes sink. Leave empty the tablets of stone. Let the strings wither in the harps hung high upon the willow tree. Let longing song not lure them to suffering, let them be swallowed by Babylon. Let Your people die out, like the rest, crushed down by the weight of other peoples, let their lifeblood seep away - Your restless people's restless blood. Let Your people perish, to the last. Take pity upon Your own, I entreat You. As You have granted to other peoples: let even their final seed be lost. May the sea never part again. May the heavens provide no manna. May water not leap from the rocks nor the guidance of law from above. Let their blood flow with muddy waters. Turn them into a plague of frogs. Pull the survivors of Israel deep beneath soft seething peatbogs. Turn Your people into a hailstorm ignorant of its mission and purpose. Let it lay waste to its own dreams and fail to pass through the Land of Goshen. Turn Your people into darkness rather than seat them in prominence between the nations and the Lord marked for the role of the scapegoat. For this people perceive the burning bush even where human flesh is on fire: have You accepted our hallelujahs, my Lord, from the smokestacks of Auschwitz? Do not stop the course of the sun, like in Gibeon, but place the night above Your people and bury Judah's brilliant, mighty city of tents. With the flame alight in the centre, our sanctuary lamp thus burns through time: like smoke from the oil-jar, our bitterness inexhaustibly flows and rises. You let six million burn in exchange for only three lives in Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego: those were your baits, whom You chose to rescue unscathed in their coats and underclothes from the fire that did not burn them - but those three should have perished deep in the flaming furnace so that Your people might not have lived ever since with the heat and stench of the fire, so that Poland might not have become the glowing throat of the furnace. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. In the impersonal silence of space Your promises have flickered away more intensely than miracles. What did the world gain by Your driving Your people into Nineveh despite their stubborn inclination drawing them on towards Tarshish?! You have given us defeat and dispersal - that alone should have been enough. But You have also granted us yearning for our ruined Jerusalem. Had but the stone remained on the well rather than that the wells of time should tower above it: all those fleeting too transparent, empty redemptions, as Joseph led Egypt out of hunger... Had but the stone remained on the well, had but the man thrown into the well remained alone in the bottom of the well. You have granted them vision for solace in the face of all torment -- Had You but smitten down Jacob with his ladder, alone to the darkness of the stones... Why did not Your pillar of fire suddenly arise behind them? - Your people, and Your word, would have expired within it beneath your mountain. You have granted them the scripture - that alone should have been enough. Had You but withheld the Sabbath and given them just the bare firmament... You have given them Jeremiah - that alone should have been enough. Had You but withheld the Lamentations, Your stern and steep vast wall of stone... Had You not granted them the Torah in place of ruined Jerusalem, its potent words instead of stones - that alone should have been enough. And You have given them Pontius Pilate - that alone should have been enough. Had You not also granted them Jesus, and the forgiveness that never came... Let Your people perish, my Lord: take pity upon Your own, I entreat You. Let the basket of bulrushes sink. Leave empty the tablets of stone. Let the strings wither in the harps hung high upon the willow tree. Let longing song not lure them to suffering, let them be swallowed by Babylon. Epilogue Empty the wombs and keep them barren Yourself, my Lord, if You can do that, take back Your promise from Your people, do not make their numbers mighty. Jesus? - At times even a single Jew is too much for a whole nation: do not judge the peoples, my Lord, according to the way they treat them. And should You take pity upon them, my Lord, which is Your prerogative, lead with compassion the darkness of Egypt out of Your cursed people. Translated from the Hungarian of András Mezei by Thomas Land |
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