POEMS
TlNO VILLANUEVA
AT THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM:
WASHINGTON D. C.
I -
Bifore Our Eyes
We've had it told to us before;
we've seen annihilation,
Vernichtung
at the movie house in town.
Videos reveal the same declensions of rage,
speech acts crowds shall act upon-
no principles governing reflection,
words shattering glass, building up the
circumstances of the fire,
the same conclusion mortality demands.
Now before our eyes: how darkly different
when a deep terrain of text persists with artifacts;
and photographs, each one a cell of time made real.
We turn, and make our way on cobblestones
pounded out from Mauthausen,
and through a freight car walk along once more,
fitting facts in place--:
what led up to what; how a people lived
keeping at their tasks which came to be their lives
with the etched impression of their
history taking place,
until one day: were seized
and carted off in trains like perishable goods
squeezed into the mind- dark of enclosure,
breath coming hard.
