Beloved

Gray figures in striped pajamas
With barbed-wire eyes
Shuffle at the edge of consciousness.
A woman, ribs like bars on a window,
Swats flies from her child's swollen tongue.
I shrug off the papery hands
That tug gently at my sleeve.
I gaze at grainy black and white photographs
And I don't see a white mountain of corpses,
The bodies clumped together like rice.
I see only patterns of light and shadow,
The linear movement created by an arm
Bent back on itself. An arm
That once comforted a sick child,
Or cooked a meal for the family.

Gold teeth plucked
From a charred charcoal face,
A stone for a bar of soap.
These things are not found
In my pockets--
I'm an American.
Until that day I watched
The historical documentary on TV,
And the vessel
Containing the life stories,
Written on scrolls,
Of each body in that mass grave;
The tightly-sealed vessel
That I carry embedded deep in my chest,
Burst,
And my tears poured out
From the cistern of my ancestors.

David W. Aronson
1996