Here too as in Jerusalem
there is the somber Wailing Wall.
Those who stood near it
will see it no more.
Empty night, empty building, deaf edifice.
From here they were dragged.
Darkness and terror remained,
and the interior--the womb of death.
Buildings in a stony procession,
under an unappeased sky,
As if thousands of families
following a funeral.
Christians, thrown to the lions
knew why they were perishing,
But you?--Here is your empty house,
fire, a blind proprietor, occupies it.
No one cast the good earth
onto that mass grave--
greeted by silence,
free of treacherous words.
When with mouths like wounds,
parched, you called for water,
no one brought water
to the sealed trains.
The earth fled under the condemned,
Warsaw fell in the smoke of the trains
and in the windows of the buildings
the sun announced dawn.
translated by
Frieda W. Aaron