Friday, January 22, 2016

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



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