Four Poems
1.
Old days squatting at the edge of vision.
I work it into an image, fix that in a frame.
But it moves off just the same,
leaving me to linger on in prison,
like a gap in time ringed by frost,
like a murky past.
Come rain or shine, the image leaves –
it goes and travels and asks questions
in my voice. Has my expressions.
And it loves and hates, it laughs and grieves,
but without my heart –
it doesn’t have my heart.
Sometimes it comes back to look at me.
Its eyes are bright and mine are dull.
It has caused great misery
and is in rude health, while I am ill.
Stained hands betray the wrong
it’s done. ‘Kill the thing!’
That’s what my heart is muttering.
But I just say, ‘Run along!’
2.
The eagle
huddled on that absurd stump
within his iron prison
stares through an immense distance –
to the clouds of another place
which he knows better
than the bars of his cage.
He always perches like that, says the Keeper.
Perfectly still.
But the monkeys next door
doing jumps nobody has ever seen –
they‘re one hundred percent at home
in a world of umbrellas, sticks and bits of orange peel
swinging happily
before an indulgent crowd.
3.
Are you dead on your feet?
Look at those shining gates
on the horizon.
They’ll give you strength.
Turn around!
Don’t go into the city, the magical city!
Its roads are covered in dirt, as with all cities,
but those far-away towers glitter
in the sunset, like gold.
4.
Kiss the day
or kiss tomorrow goodbye.
That great door shuts with a boom –
its rusted bolt squealing.
Youngsters look out!
The pen falls from shaky hands
and your hair will turn white quickly.
Oh glorious Sun
let us get wasted
one more time –
Giving chase over open country
while the hounds pant for breath at our side –
scattering mud, foam, clouds.
View halloo!
Kiss the day
or kiss tomorrow goodbye.
Sibyl Ruth’s poetry collections are Nothing Personal (Iron Press) and I Could Become That Woman (Five Leaves). She’s also translated the poetry written by her German great-aunt Rose Scooler, an inmate of the Terezin Ghetto.
Peter Kien, (1919-1944) a German-speaking Czech, was a prominent figure among the artists of Terezin. He died in Auschwitz.