A poem surprised me this morning – it wanted to come out whole and hasn’t been touched up or even edited yet. It’s one of those poems that are entirely true but still – I hope – a poem:
Pigs
My parents escaped from Nazi Danzig to a pig farm in Gloucestershire–
One month cowering in bed preparing to be found and beaten to death
And the next month being called by the pigs under the window to breakfast.
They didn’t stay there for long – my mother preferred the urban life,
Even if it meant living under bombs. But my father always remembered those pigs
Who identified him early on as the carrier of slops, and woke him every morning
Reminding him that he was not only human, but had chores to complete.
Any thoughts?
Maybe it was connected to the fact that we’re reading a book by Pierre Van Paasen, whose many documentary books about the Jews from World War I to the fifties are absolutely remarkable, but seem to have disappeared from the world along with the facts he collected then. I’ll probably have more to say about Van Paasen but for the moment his information about European nationalism and how it went hand-in-hand with post WWI anti-Semitism made me understand the persecution of my father and the terror in which he’d lived much better.
It’s important to remember that Hitler was preaching around the world to the converted.
Recent Comments