Hanoch Guy Kaner
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Selected poems from Terra Treblinka: Holocaust poems


There Are Children

There are children all over the yard,
hidden well in bushes,
spectacled trembling
through the hot air,
exhaling tremors
under my bare feet.
At noon everything
stands still.
Small windows are peering at me
toying with my beard’s reflections.
There are children all over,
their fingers crisscrossing
the yard like scissors,
standing in line 
for a hot bowl of soup.
There are children all over the yard
cuddled in corners,
crawling under grass blades,
holding their breath under mushrooms,
dripping on walls, 
clotting in a split second,
pressing their hands to my palm.
In silent stillness
all over the yard.


Eyes
for Ann Weiss

Eyes from the ashes
collecting dust on shelves
in rusting, locked sheds in Poland.
Eyes from the ashes forgotten
for decades
on snowy peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.
Collected meticulously in post-war archives.
Classified by diameter and focus.
Eyes from the ashes
wondering, searching for other eyes
from the ashes in Europe’s streams and rivers,
analyzed by paleontologists
in rock fragments in riverbeds.
Eyeless ashes spreading
on fields, polluting the
German countryside.
Eyes alone piling up,
filling up
citadels of ancient cities.
Eyes alone floating in
the vacuum of the world.
Eyes without ashes
entombed
in the belly of the earth
which does not reject
even one of them.


Streets Paved

Mountains of dirty snow             
melt down streets
paved with Jews.
Dirty snow mixes with beards and ear locks.
Sweeps away hunchbacks
with long, black, frayed gabardines
and a pregnant woman with a checkered kerchief.
Melting snow in ditches drags down
voluminous Talmuds and Mishnas.
Torah scrolls and Sabbath meals of gefilte fish,
herring bones and pieces of challah mixed with
dirty snow running down streets
paved with Jews wrapped in
black and white prayer shawls and skullcaps.
Dirty snow sweeps streets paved with Jews,
pushes them to muddy riverbanks,
leaves them stuck between roots.

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