hundreds of thousands, were led to the station,
rabid soldiers barking out orders, firing pistols
in the air, dogs bringing up the right flank. So
many helpless immortals so far from their dwelling,
clutching their garments, huddled like the bundles
they carried, unable to run away from their names.
To think they leaned where I'm standing, squatted
or kneeled, dark-stricken, their children driven
to tantrums; or stood where they could against
steel-dug-into-wood, no heaven above them, no earth
below. Some in their places fell mute, were confused,
riddled with fright when the train screeched,jolted
forth, shimmied and swayed and pulled out. Others
kept fai th, and for them the summi t of sky remained
whole; still others felt death beginning to sink
into them-everyone drawing a breath: breath in,
breath out, holding their breath, sighing, inhaling–
exhaling full breaths, half-breaths, gasping with
all complexities of thirst. Long after Treblinka,
"Water," I hear them cry. "Water, air." I step
out, looking back as I move away wi th the crowd.
One freight car at a standstill, uncoupled from its
long concatenation of steel dissolved into this
artifact: the summation of all that advances no more.
III -
The Photographs
To look
into devastated eyes is not enough; to touch
the photographs is not enough.
Even if their breath could reach me,
I could utter nothing among the ruins
written with light.
But someone such as I, a nobody in all of this,
has come to see (this much the heart allows):
what man has done to man, human acts of the profane,
and the defeated countryside.
