In the most interior halls
Of grandfather, opa, Herr Uberlebende
His mind
Behind the film that shrouds his eyes
(Fading, opaque, impenetrable)
There is a gap between the rooms that line the dusted floors--
A hole between the satanic years
When worlds erupted and world war too,
Between eight year old boy and then
The thirteen year old half-man
(His portrait was burned with all the rest,
That filled the uninhabitable rooms)
A line of broken apartments hide
Padlocked, wired, sealed by ghosts.
They lie repressed beneath the floors
And grandpapa, my dear
Has not been to clean them since
America has taught him they didn’t exist
Don’t exist
Extract your belongings
(We’ll pay your fees)
Whitewash the walls—
And then you leave.
For it would be your death to enter
Into those vacant rooms
Starved walls
Where you, yes you,
(Oh Opa, pappy)
Emaciated your soul
Deprived, you
Forsook your abode—
When an eight year old Liebling
Peering between life and death
(Retreating behind his hole in the wall)
In his splendid apartment—his very own
Looked up
At the S.S. poster boy—
And Himmler’s devil asked—
“Who is home?”
And the answer came back, in echoes
Echoes
“No one, no one is home
There is an empty apartment, empty, empty;
and no one, no one is home.”
Lies come true.
Now only echoes and the massacred
tread in the purged, forbidden rooms.
