POETRY ON THE SHOAH

BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ FOR MIRJAM LENKA born 1/15/1935, Prague died 1/6/1944, Auschwitz What was I doing when you died in the ovens, not quite nine, the two of us born the exact same day; were my eyes covered with a rag, the hide 'n seek "It" girl, or was I learning that 9 x 9 = 81, precisely, fixed in every language and catalogue of laws, fixed long after your name, incised on the vault of the Pinchas Synagogue in Prague, is but a small stone wound that cannot be felt or seen. And lashed by these lines to your vast, nearly anonymous death, my own name once again a tiny scar on the planet's tough old skin, a scar that will never heal, replace, or even protect you. Come, Mirjam, come let's play. My house, your house, the schoolyard. I twist your hair into braids, lest if fly off with you, dress you in a peasant blouse, your eyes the same shade as mine, snapshot gray-green. No need for fear, Mirjam, I'll let you go, nor need our play be morbid, each rope a noose and all the dolls dead, their slung heads swaying from the horse-chestnut tree. Laughing and glossy red, we uncross our legs. stuff secret rags and gourds in our skirts, deliver them under the porch. We feed them seeds and kernels, pink milk-buds, peel open their swaddled bodies. For hours we make them obey our private biology, the cleft between our legs still hairless and bloodless, we ourselves a pair of planes free from the tugging moon, the solid geometry of gestation. With crayons and paper you show me your curve of a pappa, tangential to a right angle chair, his top hat floating above the bread, the cut flowers, your mama bearing precarious bowls, or are they birds perhaps, birds that took flight from the fringed piano shawl, its french-knot branches and ripe bushes of bright cotton berries. You bid me enter, snap on a tasseled lamp, play the same flutter of rush-notes as I would, a gutted Schubert sonatina, all gapped walls and rickety steps, its real music locked in the piano's brain, too rich and complex for our nine year fingers. Later you walk me across the Charles Bridge, its gloomy black statues looming all the way to Mala Strana, each separate and rigid as a tombstone, never to sway, meet, much less touch. Mirjam, let me tell you about the concert: the Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Chamberlain string quartet, their instruments glittering mid-bridge, hands held on the haft of a knife so sharp your country's heart lifts like scooped fruit they split and spit out in the Moldau. Other news as well I tell you, how the pictures you made at Terezin were rescued, like very old tools and bone, spectacles shoes, gold teeth; how I myself fast reached ten, eleven, twenty, middle-age, multiplied and learned at last to live with fractions. Back, Mirjam, to you, my twin with no marker, guilt-twin, occasional dream-mate, ashes to feed Polish weeds, bodiless name, the grief that grounds all art: to claim, to fill with flesh and blood, add, multiply divide, to make once more a body. But your loss so vast and monstrous who am I to do more than make a shoddy pact with grief. Subtract. Hollow with scalpels. A scaffold with nothing inside, not a brick, not Prague's bronze astronomical clock, its hourly display of death and disciples disrupted for repair when I joined the crowd in Rathaus Square. Here, right here, you must have swung your schoolbag, the books filled with penmanship and sums. How can it be, I say as I look for you one last time, how can it be that 9 + 9 = zero? Even if I make it 9 + 9 - 9, still you come out zero, come out zero, come out zero long before your time to come out zero.

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BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ SELF-GUIDED AUDIO TOUR Study the violin, especially its veneer & the cracks in its scroll, this old man carries through the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto. It serves as his shield against bullets & fire, the bones of old chairs & beds flying through paneless windows, the gutted remains of gramophones & pianos, the smashed keys of the latter, some have claimed, still playing a Chopin polonaise. Notice the scars where the man clutches his violin's neck as if he were starving & the neck were attached to a scrawny chicken. Yet his hands appear to hold it gently so the neck will neither bleed nor break off from the heart of the violin's body. Perhaps he will rub a bittersweet waltz from its strings, a folksong extolling raisins and almonds? Lie down to die with a smile serene as an angel's or God's? Feel free to decide for yourself. Now look to the right at these two copper pots, not a hint of a stain from their last beet-roots or cabbage. Note the clarity of image, after so many years, especially the faces of those women by the table, the older wearing a knotted veil the younger staring straight at the camera. Probably only the pots survive. Stop next at Number #17. The angular woman who lies under a quilt, a few of its stitched leaves & flowers intact, has turned her face to the wall. She's refusing to drink from the cup that a man, his features unfortunately quite grainy, holds towards her on a tray, points to the lips on the laminate dollface of the infant folded on her chest where the quilt's hem slightly ripples. The piled-up beer crates in Number #20, along with the milk wagons, carriages, sleds tell us that no container's too small for the dead. But look at this next photo's laughing children, running from all corners to where Mila Street meets Muranowski Square. The men in black seem to be offering chocolates & round things that could be fruit. Perhaps the kids will soon ride out to the woods in a hay-wagon? Barely hanging, the sign above the burned-out shop straight ahead still clearly reads LODY ESKIMO GAZOWE, Ice-cream, Eskimo Brand. The wrought iron balconies in Number #30 were built in the 18th century. Their elegant spirals make them fine examples of French influence. Two figures in the background are about to leap in an attempt to escape the flames. Don't miss the cobblestones in the small photo near the exit. In the heart of the ghetto their hexagonal design remains free from blood, fire, bullet holes. Please return your headseats to the yellow bins, making sure to rewind them. Then take a moment to visit our gift shop. Thank you.

Barbara F. Lefcowitz, an America poet, has published six books of poetry with a seventh due in the spring of 2001, has also published a novel and individual poems, stories and essays in over 400 journals, has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Much, but not all, of her works concerns the Holocaust. She has visited Poland several times.

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Last update: April 19, 2001

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