ERIKO TSUGAWA-MADDEN

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Ashling McKeever

Our bodies
          (after Son of Saul)

I saw my fathers.
I saw my mothers.
I saw my sisters, brothers, grandparents.
I saw my friends, neighbours, strangers.
Their eyes were all open, the sunless sky reflected in them.
These eyes would never be closed.

Sonderkommando, one grabbed the ankles and I
held the arms of a naked body and we swung,
one, two then three, into the pit, into the pit.
Bodies, after bodies, after bodies.
The deep and wide ditches soon filled and
naked bodies were piled like crops.
The clothed stood around, indifferent to their abundant harvest.

I heard festive music every night.
I heard merry laughter upon laughter.
The sourdough rye cut casually and dark wine poured to the brim.
Some must have been dancing.
The wooden floor drummed with heavy boots.
Then I heard machine-gun shots synchronized with their cries of ‘Prost!’

There was a runner.
There were runners.
The torches lit their tattooed numbers.

I saw my wife among the bodies piled like fire logs for winter.
Untrimmed white branches entwined.
Her bare arms up as if inviting me to lie down beside her.
You hid our wedding ring in a plait of your hair, I know,
but they shaved your head.

Then I found my son’s body.
His skin still as soft as the day I first touched it.
That day your mother, with a painfully beautiful smile,
commanded me: ‘Introduce yourself to your son’.
My son, I am a dead body standing beside you.