I Never Knew My Grandparents - Jana Klenburg

[Lawrence Robinson]

I Never Knew My Grandparents

I have this rage that I can never feel.
Bereft of unconditional love
the deeper healing
grandparents that spoil us as we grow
grandparents I never knew
Treblinka
from my mother Sara’s side
fifth seven aunts and uncles
that have no face
for me
no cousins to play with
>From my father Sasha's side
we don’t know where...
they just disappeared…
A nazi attempt to exterminate
the fire of the burning bush.
Six years of no-light days and vacant moon
Treblinka
where the smell of terror is still in the ground
seventy nine years later
>From my mother family,all that remains are
thee sepia photographs…
Bubi,grandma Chaya,Zeide,grandpa Avraham
I look for your dignified faces,
ingrained in my brain
I look at he newsreels from Poland
where mountains of bodies
still soft of limb
are shoved by mechanical plows
into communal holes
where the earth still moves.
Zeiden where is your magical violin?
Bubi,where is your cholent
you Sabbath stew
“the best that has ever been made”
my mother repeatedly said.

Bubi Zelda on my fafher's Russian side,
all that is left of our entire family  
only one small photo of you!
I see your stern peasant face
and my heart in exile reaches
for your eyes
that shone with knowing

Tonight I can not sing.
How can one speak in poems
of missing the never experienced love?
My head hurts so
that I can hear the dust fall

Hitler also had a mother,they say
who begot a holocaust of one
a genetic nightmare
with a love for music and an iron heart

A holocaust of one
three fifty-seven
six million it was

Four photos is all I have
and this rage that I can never feel.

	- Jana Klenburg