Auschwitz, All Hallows

By Cyrus Cassells
Look, we have made
a counterpoint
 
of white chrysanthemums,
a dauntless path
 
of death-will-not-part-us petals
and revering light;
 
even here,
even here
 
before the once-wolfish ovens,
the desecrating wall
 
where you were shot,
the shrike-stern cells
 
where you were bruised
and emptied of your time-bound beauty—
 
you of the confiscated shoes
and swift-shorn hair,
 
you who left,
as sobering testament, the scuffed
 
luggage of utter hope
and harrowing deception.
 
Come back, teach us.
From these fearsome barracks
 
and inglorious fields
flecked with human ash,
 
in the russet-billowing hours
of All Hallows,
 
let the pianissimo
of your truest whispering
 
(vivid as the crunched frost
of a forced march)
 
become a slowly blossoming,
ever-voluble hearth
 
revealing to us
(the baffled, the irresolute,
 
the war torn, the living)
more of the fire
 
and attar of what it means
to be human.
 

Copyright Credit: Cyrus Cassells, "Auschwitz, All Hallows" from The Crossed-Out Swastika.  Copyright © 2012 by Cyrus Cassells.  Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: The Crossed-Out Swastika (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)