The Minora has a flame

 

Fold away a selfish piece

of a sullen day; the rising crescendo

of baneful and needful ways

Rings loud and true  and caught

In the mind’s  mirror.

Trapped between ancient mercury and beveled plates

Where artisans gave lives to art

The fatal darkness into mouth from fingertips

When ignorance was far more costly than the jewels they made.

A dizzying whirl of clocks of another world

Timepieces of pained selectivity, art and guile

In gold and precious mattes shaped by will

And the even eyes of an older world

The Minora has a flame and a heart

on this day I listen to its beat and sense the warmth

when words make a flow, and a bridge

from this day unto that, when breath came

in an agony, a spill of life blotted by unwilling earth

when the ground was an accomplice and the air

held smoke of sacrifice, and the last eyes of the martyrs.

I visited an Holocaust Museum in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. I was treated to a personal, guided tour for which I am and will be eternally grateful. At this remarkable place, I saw a collection of artifacts that were like treasures; they held memories and vital proofs of an eventful and sad time. It was an era that defined humanity, it carved itself into a wall of stone forever. I was moved and saddened, but discovered, there is a certain joy in holding these memories. They are things of lives that simply must not be forgotten…hdm