I have returned where I have never been;
I’ve walked in streets where once the ghetto stood—
To live the scattered fragments of this scene
As if I could imagine memory:
A fragment of the wall that held them fast,
The mound that marks the Mila 18 site,
Remembrance in monuments that last,
And flickering images in Nazi films.
It’s only in our sadness we can touch
The hard gray loss of all their many gifts:
Of children in their hopes so very much—
They play on film, they learn, they steal, they starve,
The poets searching in halt words their fate,
And artists picturing with light the darkness
Of each day—the young, old, all to hate
In bondage. May we keep them in our hearts.
