Auschwitz-Birkenau - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Auschwitz-Birkenau

To awaken here
Is to hear silence
Shrieking in cold,
Empty corridors, to awaken

In a heart hewn
By fear, a darkness
Closed to compassion.
Any kindness

Is all kindness--a treachery
We must enter, allow to enter us--
Ask us, "who are you here
In this hallowed hell?"

No where to step
Where ash hasn't fallen,
Where cruelty hasn't walked,
Fed on our tender fear. 

Who am I in this
Enormous evil?
A dog waiting at a platform?
Or the child terrified of dogs,

Clutching a brother's hand?
A boy alive forever,
Forever frightened so we
Will know what we can do.

I move through ghosts, numb.
Like others, I am dumb,
In respectful, awful silence,
Save for voices screaming,

Who I am?  Am I 
The selfless priest crammed
In a standing cell, dying 
For a stranger who survived?

Who am I here in history's
Hall of horrors? Walls lined
With visages, victims
Who haven't yet imagined

What we can do--will do.

Not Nazis, not
Germans, but humans
Did this. We
Do this now.

To awaken here is 
To see that casual blue
Chip in the sky's
Somber gray soul,

Innocent opening
letting light flow down,
Bless this damned,
Degraded place.

To awaken here,
Is to know one's
Darkness, and not
Turning from it, see that light.

	- Rebecca del Rio