Tamara Beryl Latham - The Poet

The Holocaust - A Poem of Remembrance

 

The Holocaust - A Poem of Remembrance

Skeletal frames 
whose beaten hearts
once bore
the heft of Hitler\'s war,

who knelt in mass,
in silence quaked,
with stifled groans
beneath the veil of death.

Through reddened
tear-stained eyes
they prayed in vain 
for meager crumbs
of hardened,
moldy bread.

While Kristallnacht fueled
raging fires
that burned old memories
and future dreams.

Death trains droned 
(broken bones were stacked)
as clinking of the gold
removed from teeth 
shattered the serenity of night.

Yet, through the horror
of sacrificial lambs 
an image loomed
within a vapor cloud:
Rachel, weeping drops of blood,
\'My children are no more.\'

And what remained,
were piles of sable ash
(unmarked by granite stones)
that filled the earthen pits.

Yet, I still weep 
for what was flesh
reduced to bone and cinder - 

for those with silent tongues
who turned away.

If tears were oceans,
mine have formed them all.