August 9/3:15 /lc
"...the "city of the dead" is finally transformed from a metaphor into
a literal reality..."
-Gil
Elliot (Lucifer -1978, Wildwood House)
This happened
the night July became August
a year later
during morning rush hour
this happened
just over the fence
a week later
downtown
in the Family Camp
as several cattle cars barreled through the Polish countryside
this happened.
He was thrown backwards, the entire window embedded in his
back.
One survivor, Jewish, testified at Nuremberg: he had often looked over
the fence into the Gypsy camp and felt jealous: they were all of them
together: mothers, children, fathers, old people ...
45 years removed: you and Yoko sit at the round table in her bedroom glued to episode 12 of the Reign of Sei i tai shogun, Ashikaga [a soap opera on SF's Japanese TV channel]. A woman in white face, butterfly hair, kimono of iris: iris imprinted over pale green background: takes the note from the maid, reads it and shrieks, then assumes an extraordinary calm. The maid falls to her knees, breaks down in tears. The white-faced woman speaks [SUBTITLES]: 'I am ready. Prepare me.' Yoko gets up suddenly, rummages in a drawer, comes back. She places in your hands a black and white photo of a young Japanese woman in traditional dress. "This is my mother," Yoko says. "O it is the same kimono," you say, thinking that is the point. "No, everyday kimono," Yoko says. You laugh. "What?" Yoko asks. "The way you said that— 'every day kimono'.
The legacy of a red planet: before you were even born they were saying there could have been life there
At the Big Camp
In the great
eight-island nation
The maid comes back in holding a silver salver. She bows and places the salver on the table before the white-faced woman. Kore wa desu ka? Sore wa desu ka? What is this? That? You have practiced the letters: pictures you see through to the actual thing: you can do the literal translation now. You can ask this now. Abunai. Be careful. You can say this now. You hold it and look carefully.
A light
even the blind saw
Looking for Yoko in her face, throat cut by the kimono's severe lines. Everyday.
The Guardian photo: a lone aged Polish Rom
Black suit, black hat
walking across the fields towards Auschwitz.
The literal reality
People going on about their business
Those worked to death
You say, "She's beautiful, Yoko." On the silver salver there is a single item: a small stiletto. Her white hand reaches out and grasps it. It is this day, as the white-faced woman draws a firm clean red line across her throat, as you hold her mother in your hands: as this is going on, you learn Yoko is from Hiroshima.
And then there was the morning he woke up and looked over the fence and they were gone, they had all disappeared.
He dreamed 'a great bare eyeball bigger than my life'
He received a letter: an uncorroborated report from a survivor: that they were not gassed but burned alive in the crematoria
told you women like her mother, women from there, pika women: were scrutinized by the families of prospective grooms: 'They were looking for the spots—there was the pika, the light—then the kuroi ame.."
Obedience strikes you as the last thing you would ask of another.
" ... and after that black rain: bruises like splashed sumi you couldn't wash out ..."
You hold open your hands. There—not like or as—is a year and a day: two large scale summary executions on two continents. A program for each that succinctly explained the reasoning and necessity.
For example: weather as good as it was going to get
For example: room had to be made for the Jews of Lodz Ghetto.
Do not think such things couldn't happen in a month meaning: magnificent, venerable.
Primary burns are injuries of a special nature and not ordinarily experienced in everyday life
Before him: 'shimmering leaves': it is 8 AM the temperature 80 degrees the wind calm ...
Below him, the seven branches of the Ota River, the city appearing as
an open, extended hand
Behind him: what is not in the photo: horrific fire: Zigeunernacht: Night
They Burned The Gypsies.