Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is a day to remember. This is a poem in memoriam by Czeslaw Milosz, born in 1911 in Lithuania and a survivor of WWII in Warsaw.

Album of Dreams

June 17
And that snow will remain forever,
unredeemed, not spoken of to anyone.
On it their track freezes at sunset
in an hour, in a year, in a district, in a country.

And that face will remain forever
beaten for ages by drops of rain.
One drop is running from eyelid to lip
on an empty square, in an unnamed city.

August 14
They ordered us to pack our things, as the house was to be burned.
There was time to write a letter, but that letter was with me.
We laid down our bundles and sat against the wall.
They looked when we placed a violin on the bundles.
My little sons did not cry. Gravity and curiosity.
One of the soldiers brought a can of gasoline. Others were tearing
down curtains.

November 23
A long train is standing in the station and the platform is empty.
Winter, night, the sky is flooded with red.
Only a woman's weeping is heard. She is pleading for something
from an officer in a stone coat.