Charles Fishman
A Dance on the Poems of Rilke
I remember a Czech dancer who danced on the poems of Rilke.
—Stennie Pratomo-GretIn the particular hell of Ravensbrück
where Gypsy girls were sterilized and babies
were drowned at birthwhere dysentery
and typhus
experiments in the inducement of infection and painwere cultivated as a fine art
of every European nation slaved for Siemens
through endless moonless nights
dug pits
where abortion was inevitableand where a woman could be martyred for using rags
as tampons
a certain Czech woman who knew every word
to the poems of Rilke
of his Orphean sonnetsof each Elegie: she felt the dark music of Rilke’s heart
each soaring leap of the spirit
Though she is gone and we no longer know her name
is the one who showed even a halting step could be a triumph
and a dance on the poems of a dead poet
Eastern Europe after the War
Wisps of memory
A few years earlier, millions died in sub-zero
temperature
they were whipped
and rifle butts
from their arms
changed nothing
they were kicked
Those still living clutched at prayer shawls
or thrice-blessed amulets
their tears
Their deaths did not alter the sky, which continues
to shelter their murderers
that churned for days afterward has yielded nothing
but fragments
the landscape
in humanity
of the missing
and drifted into history
not a stitch was mended
in the abandoned universe
Chelmno
A child of survivors speaks . . .
My first memories come from Chelmno:
at that time, there were no monuments
or markings, just a large clearing in the midst
of the forest. You could see where the mass graves
were: the thick green grass told you, the tilt and drift
of the earth told you. I remember the teeth,
a frayed piece of blue cloth.
My mother is the only survivor of her family.
She’s from Lask, near Lodz, a Polish village.
Her father was the rabbi for 3,000 Jews, half
the population of that village. Her parents, sisters,
and their families perished at Chelmno.
She survived the camps, the marches, was liberated
by Partisans. My mother is lucky and strong.
In 1992, with my dear father, I visited Lodz,
also Lask. There, we spoke with the only surviving Jew,
a woman of 90 who remembered my mother
and who cried when she recognized my grandfather’s face
in mine. Together, we walked through the beautiful
wide clearing in the midst of the woods that was Chelmno,
the beautiful woods where 250,000 Jews are buried.
A Child Survivor
For Arthur Kurzweil
With the help of a Catholic woman,
one of the righteous among the nations,
she escaped from the blazing furnace
of Warsaw. For 18 years, she was protected
even loved
let the truth flare, briefly, under the sun,
that the child—long since become
a lovely young woman—listened
and learned. But that other world
remained unapproachably distant—
the dark side of her private moon—
for the child she had been lived only
in whispers
in the unilluminated space of a lost galaxy
in the billionth billionth lightyear of the heart.
Only after marriage to a man who mourned
all that was gone
that miracle of history and continuance—
could she feel in her blood
of the gift her mother had given her:
she was a Jew who had survived.
The Ballad of Ravensbrück
I feel like a ghost—I’m supposed to be dead.
—Bella Eisenberg50th anniversary of Liberation—April 24, 1995
4,000 women have returned
to Ravensbrück today
carrying roses wreaths and canes:
they’ve come to grieve and pray
Here is the wall where Rosa was whipped
for fashioning a small rag doll
and this is where Anja was burned by a guard
and this is where Sofi was mauled
This is where Magda was tortured for praying
and this is where Dora was hanged
and here is the Lake of Babies who drowned
before they were nursed or named
Ravensbrück refused them drink
refused them food and pride:
it forced them to divorce their hearts
from their souls and minds
But some were strong and fate decreed
that they would not be lost:
these women—raped and scarred for life—
still managed to resist
Though beaten sterilized and starved
they helped each other live;
though caged in dark and filthy cells
40,000 survived
See, here is Bella who feels like a ghost
and here is Hana who died
and this is Ilsa who kneels in the dirt—
she committed suicide
This is Stenni and her sister Marie
with their faces in their hands:
they wear the stripes and hear the cries
of women who died on this land
Come, let us light a candle now
in this oven that’s grown cold
for 90,000 prisoners
who in Ravensbrück were killed.
©2001 Charles Fishman
Charles Fishman is director of the Distinguished Speakers Program at SUNY Farmingdale, where he previously directed the Visiting Writers Program for 18 years. His books include Mortal Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka, which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the outstanding books of the year (1989) and nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He has received the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize from Southern California Anthology, the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Prize from Negative Capability, a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and numerous other awards and honors. He was final judge for the 1998 Capricorn Book Award and has recently served as Poetry Editor for the Journal of Genocide Studies and Cistercian Studies Quarterly (following Denise Levertov in that position). Currently, he is Associate Editor of The Drunken Boat. His 8th chapbook, Time Travel Reports, will be published by Timberline Press in 2002. He can be reached at either carolus[AT]optonline.net or charllzz[AT]yahoo.com (replace [AT] with @).
Back to
