Reports from the east

Days coming away from each other,

threshed out.

Stripped to the bone. Butchered.

The bones pounded to black dust

gold teeth are sieved off.

Trains, marshes, ashes. Some

request death, some walk into the wire,

one told to hang himself

took off his belt and did so.

Whether you will,

whether the clocks shedding

moment across moment record it

pain

comes to be fed, all the cries

to be uttered, misery’s processions

to be numbered.

Or else

let there be singing, as at Janowska.

A fiddle, a whole orchestra

is given. We have to be thankful,

even one mercy, a raindrop for instance.