Poetry
MY MUSELMAN STATUE | FIREFLY | THE WALLS OF TEREZIN | TEDDY BEAR UNDER AN EIDERDOWN | RETURN TO THERESIENSTADT | SPRING IN BERLIN | PRESENTATION | AN UNOPENED LETTER

RETURN TO THERESIENSTADT
by Vera Meisels

    It's not clear, it's all getting blurred
    I'm assailed by searches and proofs.
    They tell me "Go, close the circle",
    while for me it's all parallel lines
    like railroad tracks into the distance;
    remembering myself in the boxcar
    clattering over them.

    A scrap of barred sky overhead, looking for a lost doll,
    the moon racing eye to eye with me in aperture,
    as if it was crossed out by a barbed-wire X.

    And now, I arrive at the ghetto gate again,
    standing opposite the "Kinderheim"
    I see a house with arched ceilings,
    walls, surviving layers of whitewash
    and try to find a scratch, a bit of name.
    It's all been re-painted, perhaps to obscure it,

    I look for a familiar little corner
    and here is the "high" knob of the heavy gate
    I could never reach to prove
    it was locked.

    I touch and caress in my gnarled hand
    and the knob seems to shrivel in my fist.