BABI YAR
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.
I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.
It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.
I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.
I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.
O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.
I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”
It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.
-“They come!”
-“No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”
-“They break the door!”
-“No, river ice is breaking…”
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.
And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.
No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!
**************************************************
NOTES
—–
1 – Alfred Dreyfus was a French officer, unfairly dismissed from service in 1894 due to trumped-up charges prompted by anti- Semitism.
2 – Belostok: the site of the first and most violent pogroms, the Russian version of Kristall Nacht.
3 – “Internationale”: The Soviet national anthem.
Posted @ http://remember.org/witness/babiyar
Is It Because I’m Black
The dark brown shades of my skin, only add colour to my tears
That splash against my hollow bones, that rocks my soul
Looking back over my false dreams, that I once knew
Wondering why my dreams never came true
Is it because I’m black?
Somebody tell me, what can I do
Something is holding me back
Is it because I’m black?
In this world of no pity
I was raised in the ghetto of the city
Momma, she works so hard
To earn every penny
Something is holding me back
Is it because I’m black?
Like a child stealing candy for the first time, and got caught
Thiefing around life’s corner somewhere I got lost
Something is holding me back
I wonder, is it because I’m black?
Somebody tell me what can I do
Will I survive, or will I die?
You keep on holding me back
You keep on holding on
You keep on picking on me
You keep on holding me back
You keep on holding on
You keep on holding on
You’re holding me back
I wonder why, you do me like that
But you keep on holding me back
You keep on putting your foot on me
But I, I’ve got to break away
Somehow and someday
Cause I wanna be somebody so bad, so bad
I wanna be somebody, I wanna be somebody so bad
You see, I want diamond rings and things, like you do
And I wanna drive Cadillac cars
I wanna be somebody so bad
But you keep on putting your foot on me
And I, I believe, I believe I can break away
And be somebody, somehow, and someway
Ya see, I heard somebody say one time
You can make it, if you try
And some of us, we tried so hard, we tried so hard
I want you to know that I don’t speak for myself
But I speak for y’all too right now
Ya see, if you have white-like brown skin and a high yeller
You’re still black
So we all got to stick together right now
This I wanna say to you my sisters and my brothers
Right on sister
Right on brother
Dig this:
And we keep on pushing down
We’ve got to make it a little bit further
We’ve got to make it a little further
All we got to do is try, try, try
And some of us, we’ve tried so hard
We’ve tried so hard, we’ve tried so hard
We’ve tried so hard, so hard to be somebody
We’ve tried so hard, although, they’re holding us back
And it stairs the reason, that they’re doing us like that
You know what? It is
I believe, it is because we are black
But hey, we can’t stop now, we can’t stop now
We’ve got to keep on, keep on, keep on, keeping on
We’ve got to keep on keeping on
I know and I know and I know that you know that I know it ain’t right
Oh, it ain’t right, it ain’t right, it ain’t right
That they hold us, hold us, hold us back
They’re holding us back, they’re holding us back
I wonder, sometimes I sit down, sit down and I wonder
https://genius.com/Syl-johnson-is-it-because-im-black-lyrics; on album of same name, produced by Twinight Records.
For Colored Girls When the Rainbow is Enuf (excerpt)
“somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl’s song
bring her out
to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
carin/ struggle/ hard times
sing her song of life
she’s been dead so long
closed in silence so long
she doesn’t know the sound
of her own voice
her infinite beauty
she’s half-notes scattered
without rhythm/ no tune
sing her sighs
sing the song of her possibilities
sing a righteous gospel
let her be born
let her be born
& handled warmly.”
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/505856-for-colored-girls-who-have-considered-suicide-when-the-rainbow-is-enuf
Appalachian Elegy
The following are two selections from bell hooks’ Appalachian Elegy (2012).
2.
such then is beauty
surrendered
against all hope
you are here again
turning slowly
nature as chameleon
all life change
and changing again
awakening hearts
steady moving from
unnamed loss
into fierce deep grief
that can bear all burdens
even the long passage
into a shadowy dark
where no light enters
18.
when trees die
all small hearts break
little living creatures
happy and safe
uprooted
now in need of finding
new places
when home
cracks and breaks and falls
all life becomes danger
how to find
another place
where all is not
yet barren
A Letter to Brock Turner
Your Honor, if it is all right, for the majority of this statement I would like to address the defendant directly.
You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.
On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, there’s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself “big mama”, because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college(…)
One night in January 2015, two Stanford University graduate students biking across campus spotted a freshman thrusting his body on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. This March, a California jury found the former student, 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, guilty of three counts of sexual assault. Turner faced a maximum of 14 years in state prison. He was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner, a champion swimmer who once aspired to compete in the Olympics — a point repeatedly brought up during the trial. Turner’s victim addressed him directly, detailing the severe impact his actions had on her — from the night she learned she had been assaulted by a stranger while unconscious, to the grueling trial during which Turner’s attorneys argued that she had eagerly consented. The woman, now 23, told BuzzFeed News she was disappointed with the “gentle” sentence and angry that Turner still denied sexually assaulting her. “Even if the sentence is light, hopefully this will wake people up,” she said. “I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.”
Testimony of Bazire
On Wednesday 6th April 1994, my mother came back from Kigali having returned from buying stock for her shop. She told us to pray. That the end for us had arrived. She told us that the former president had died. The next day interahamwe, some of them our neighbours, came to steal our belongings. On neighbouring hills, people were being killed. On Sunday 10th April the killings reached our home area. We heard a whistle for the killings to start. Immediately we ran towards the bush and stayed there until nightfall. We went to ask a man we knew in the village for refuge, but he refused. Though he relented when my mother gave him money. We hid in his house. At around 3am, my mother and my grandmother left the house asking us to stay. We were to never see them again. Several days later, we learned that our uncles and our grandfathers had been killed.
I hoped that this man would not harm us children. But one time, when the man was drunk, he brought a group of interahamwe round to the house, informing them that we were hiding there. They beat us badly. I remember some of the people among them. These men raped my sister and me the whole night, and I was continually beaten. They then took us to another man. We continued to be tortured and continually raped by these interahamwe.
It was the 24th April when the rescue army reached our region. One man was frightened and took us with him by force. My sister was weak and frail; she told me that she had to find a way of hiding me because she felt that she was close to dying. When the man left us for a few minutes, she made me sneak into a van. The van drove off, and when it finally stopped I sneaked out and walked off. It was a roadblock. There were many people there, and I managed to mingle with the crowd. By God’s mercy I survived. I learnt that that my sister had just been killed. I was in despair because I thought that she was the last of my family.
Fortunately, a man took pity on me and agreed to help me try find family members who had survived. I found that my uncle, my mother and my grandmother were still alive. Both my mother and grandmother had both been gang raped. When I told my mother about the ordeal that my sister and I had been put through, she decided that we all should take an HIV test. My result came back negative. But my mother and grandmother were found to be HIV positive.
The result cast over us a shadow of grief and despair. But we are slowly learning to talk about our fears. I now study and the Government funds my education. I have to work hard and get a good degree, so that I can get a well paying job. I need one, as I have to take care of my mother and grandmother.
I pray every day that God will give me intelligence, in order to finish my studies well.
“It Was the Very Worst Time”
“I went… there was an office in Prague where you had lists and lists of people who came back; I don’t know if it was in alphabetical order maybe, or dates when they came back, but you could check if you knew anybody who came back. And I went to see these lists every day, hoping somebody would came back I knew, but none of the family came back at all. And I went for days and days, actually for weeks afterwards, to see if anybody would come back, but they didn’t. So I just remember walking around Prague being absolutely devastated, feeling that you know, I was alone in the world, that… I didn’t know anybody, just didn’t know anybody. It was really I think the worst time of the war. Although we were free and liberated, it was the very worst time because we realised, or I realised that nobody was going to come back, and that life is never going to be the same, and what I hoped for would happen after the war is never going to happen. The hope was gone. Because until then one had hope, that there would be a small group of people one knew, some relative, some friends, and one would start life again in a community; get married, have children, and… you know, carry on. But there was absolutely nobody there whom I knew. I was seventeen.”
Edith Birkin Born 1927, Prague, Czechoslovakia. Lodz ghetto 1941. Auschwitz camp 1944. Sent to work camp and munitions factory. 1945 death march to Flossenburg camp, then to Belsen. Arrived in England 1946. Married, three adopted children.
“He Took Most of Your Life Away”
“The people put the slice of bread, like myself, underneath the pillow until the morning. You could hear during the night shouting. ‘You stole my bread. You stole my quota.’ Somebody stole each other’s slice of bread. So the law, unofficial law was, he had to be killed, by strangling. Who done it, either the people themselves, or if there was a nice man, a kapo, which he was a Jew or sympathetic, he done it, strangled him, and put him down in the wash-room, the toilets, and that’s how the… Every morning when we came down to have a wash you could see somebody is laying there from different places. Because, if you took somebody’s slice of bread away, you took his… they considered he took most of your life away, it was your living. The Germans didn’t know about it.”
Morris Frenkel Born 1925, Lodz, Poland. Lodz ghetto. Birkenau and Auschwitz camps. Liberated from Dachau camp. Arrived in England 1947. Married, two sons