After Oświęcim

‘How could there be poetry?’*
asked one sage.
 ‘Poetry makes nothing happen:
it survives,' another wrote.**

We hope.

-'Not one saved from the gas chamber’
by half-rhymes and alliteration.
Beauty becomes dissonance
against history’s backdrop.

Perhaps.

‡“The Austrian nature
is towards absolutism
tempered by indolence.”

Lazy indifference has never
defeated a demagogue
armed with slogans.

Scribblers write only
on the paper
over the cracks.

When the foundations shift
'enlightenment'
becomes jumbled fragments
- no light, just ten men -
with all the power
in their secret pockets.
All the words burn
on the pyre
of all the books
lit by newly
uniformed
civil servants.

Posterity shines today’s light
on history’s dark corners:
still we need spectacles
to see it.
Parades and speeches
are moving irony
given the jackboot’s
march along the Seine
and the Volga
to the music of bombs
and propaganda.

How could there be Poetry?

There will always be Poetry,
because truth is beauty,
because
this
was
a
man.

* George Steiner
** WH Auden
‡ Unknown Viennese cited by Tom Stoppard in a recent interview

Suggested reading, ‘If This Is A Man’, Primo Levi.