Remembering

27/01/2020

Liberation of Auschwitz, Jan. 27, 1945

Poem about a man who arrived at Auschwitz with a violin.

08/10/2019

Friend ~

As Thomas watched
He saw a tattered terrier
Run up to the gate and bark,
Saw an officer in black
Walk over to it, draw his pistol
And shoot it between the eyes.

Then turning to the waiting line
He saw an old woman sobbing,
Whereupon he walked back
To the dog, picked it up
And flung it at her full-force
Blurting out: God damn you,
Good-for-nothing,
Yiddish mother-bitch.

Thomas watched her fall
Heard her head crack
On damp asphalt,
And kneeling beside her
Heard her beg
"Dog, my dog"
Before her final gasp.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/SeeingMonk/

Twenty short poems about a monk in Auschwitz.

09/08/2019

Scrap of Paper

In glossy black boots
The Sturmfuehrer stood
In front of the starving men
Eating a wurst wrapped in paper.

After he had finished he crumpled it
Then let it fall.
Thomas was ordered to pick it up
With his teeth
And deposit it in the trash.

He recognized what it was,
A page of the Torah,
And slid it into his sleeve.

That evening after dark
He passed it to an old man
And after midnight
Saw a group of them
Huddled at the far end of the block
Listening to him read it
Over and over again.

When daylight came
They were chased out
To a mound before an open pit.
Lining themselves at the edge
The Sturmfuehrer
Had them turn to him
And he shot them in the forehead,
One after the other.

09/05/2019

Face ~

She was fifteen when they dragged her
From a cellar window in Goettingen
Where she had spent
Three years in hiding.

She was not much to look at—
But she could love.
And now, in the line to the gas chamber
Her only thought was that of her Lover
Whom she knew was waiting
To engulf her in the heat of his love,
And while making her way to meet Him
She walked upright, bold and proud,
Longing to intensify the fire
Of His love with hers.

And Thomas, on seeing her face
Felt God closer here
Than in any other place.

Thomas Merton was a contemplative monk who spent 27 years inside the walls of a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Even though he was never at Auschwitz this poetry places him there so as to let a generous sensitivity and tenacious faith like his respond to this horrendous calamity.

31/01/2019

Man with a Violin ~

Thomas saw one arrival
Carrying a violin case
And reaching him a hand
Asked what he intended.
Whereupon the man straightened
And answered with eyes shut:
To play but ten bars
Of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Right then a black baton
Tapped on the case
To throw it on the pile.

The bullet entered
From behind the brain,
On bending over
To open it to play.

09/10/2017

Thomas Merton was a contemplative monk who spent 27 years inside the walls of a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Even though he was never at Auschwitz this poetry places him there so as to let a generous sensitivity and tenacious faith like his respond to this horrendous calamity.

30/05/2017

Arrival Platform

Thomas watched what they did
With the child
Who fell from the cattle car
That brought the women
From Warszawa.
How the soldier grabbed it by the feet
And smashed it up against
The steel siding.

Someone saw Thomas rush over
To hold up a trough of tin
To catch consecrated chalicefuls
Of mothers' tears in.

More - Click below:

About a child who fell from a train car on arrival at Auschwitz.

28/01/2017

[click] http://www.cingolani.com/entertm.html

Thomas Merton was a contemplative monk who spent 27 years inside the walls of a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Even though he was never at Auschwitz this poetry places him there so as to let a generous sensitivity and tenacious faith like his respond to this horrendous calamity.