So here we are, in the Vilna Ghetto.

Emptiness, everywhere.

Graves bloom like flowers, heavy with rain.

That’s ‘poetry’ – in Ponar

where the seized go, are no graves,

just palls of black smoke, stinking the trees.

Because I’m eleven they think

I can’t see everyone waiting.

They don’t want that I see; but my eyes

record this corpse (stairwell),

that beggar (courtyard), the soprano

stripped naked to sing, before the shots.

No space is safe here. The Jerusalem

of the West has become something else.

You can disappear at practice,

going for bread, even with work permits.

If I live, I’ll refuse

to remember this past that breeds hate.

I’ll fight to forget, go on playing.

Though the song I wrote

may be sung now to weeping

it was a different beginning.