SPRING
2002 [These two poems were written by a former student of Woodstown MM’s Mary Mills. They are particularly appropriate in the issue announcing our Quarterly Meeting program about the Woodstown Peace Center, a particular concern of Mary’s and a resource for Holocaust studies in South Jersey—Ed.]
Hope Defiled
Emily Rose Frankenberg
I am a desecrated Torah
I am God dismembered, dead,
with bitter acid
seething through my benedictions,
glowing red.
I topple, thunderous, like lives into the pit.I am a desecrated Torah,
like a prayer raped in an alley,
dazed and naked,
pages aching, slashed,
the binding of a faith (almost) unbound.
Girl at an Italian DP Camp
Emily Rose Frankenberg
Within a hospital
in regions
where the Nazis once held firm,
a person views
humanity
displayed on cracking windows.She is fifteen, eighteen. . .
Who can tell?
Her hollow heart and belly
wait and yearn to be refilled.Such dense humanity. . .
Their tears and laughs and feelings
are divided
by the thinnest walls
and even thinner curtains
tossed on
balmy Tuscan breeze.This girl can scarcely comprehend
the panorama seen across
the cobwebbed glass:Her face is one of thousands,
gaunt and pale
trapped in reflection
trapped in common pain
in sweet relief and sorrow,
in the life that still goes on.RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
