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Auschwitz
OSWIECIM November
Today hell is freezing over.
The snow is whipped into thick jackets,
And shots of ice puncture pink faces,
Blinking rapidly through beaded tears.
The birds apparently don't sing anymore.
Today there are none to be seen.
The snow has come early this year.
Trees rise up out of darkling shadows
Like frozen skeletons of burnt umber,
Upper arms heavy and coated in zinc white,
Breath soured by the muddy earth.
At the Iron Gate,
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
A band once played mindless marches
Marking the beginning of the end.
Wide-eyed and quick on grease,
People slide by the faded, sepia
Photographs of shaven heads,
Hanging glassy eyed,
Wall after wall after wall.
Eyes avert as gravity drags on eye sockets,
Like children peeping behind a settee.
Volume and density are in formulaic state.
Hair, boots, shoes, wire-rims,
Toothbrushes, suitcases, combs and
A railway line tuned to end in a sharp crescendo.
All paint on the jigsaw pieces now diffuse,
Build heavy impasto into a complete picture.
The drying light begins to flare up,
Dawn eggs of truth are spawned.
Viruses lies dormant in all of us,
A deafening gong to the sleeping.
Leaving that cold place thaws the flesh.
A match lights up back burners boiling inside,
Infected scars are aflame and mind sore,
Needles ink indelibly into the warming tissues,
Like a numbered tattoo on the arm.
Disorientation
Disorientation is a strange place of lanterns,
Hanging high over empty random streets,
Spraying out asterisks of diffused light.
Dream of a knowledge where buried maps lie
Itching mantles deep under the skin.
Orientation has been miss-mapped.
Eyes of stone now closed and fooled
No longer look with the clearest view.
Pathways or trails are not marked.
Visible road signs are blurred by
A phenomenon of blocked insides,
Traumatised by years of experimentation
From a textbook of singular warnings.
A double dose of eyes prescribed
To shift the gloom.
A drowning man has a suitcase packed.
Is ready to travel onwards far
Reaching for a hand to pull him out
Because the luggage label is blank.
It's too late the cry rang out with echoes.
Why grope at air as the slack wrist waves,
There's an absolute blindness in the light
As if looking straight at the sun.
The Day Stretched Out a Shadow on the Wall
The day stretched out a shadow on the wall.
The easel sky, stroked with grains of cobalt
Lay a thick impasto on the drowsy eye.
The heat an opiate to the dying breeze,
Weakened its filters beneath the hedgerows.
And under the shrubs, in caves of orange light,
Weeds dived to earth sapped hollows,
With silent oaths pouring from the lips of harmony.
Loose stings combed from a nettle's hair,
Wept pain on broken summer leaves,
Whilst the slipper peace of smooth, round pebbles,
Half hidden amongst the browning grass stalks
Are kissed in sleep at the foot of the wall.
I, salty eyed and lead limbed,
Washing light through a mouth of gathering senses,
Wet the flame of daylight squeezed from my veins,
Dream steps lost in a distant taste of jelly lips.
Nightshade would choke the waking sun,
A white heart streaked with rays of sadness
Would suck out my breath from the dark side.
Martin Jervis lives in Leeds, England. His poetry has been published in the UK,
the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. He spends part of the year in India and has written
a series of poems with an Indian theme. He has also travelled extensively and is currently completing
a book of collected works.
He has been previously published in Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Outposts,
The Black Rose, Jones Av. (Canada) Eclipse, Decanto, Starving Art (US), Expos’d, Everyman Press,
Poetic Hours, Poetry Repair Shop (US), Stylus (AUS), Carnelian (US), The Quiet Feather, Poetry and Graphics Monthly,
Whimperbang (US), Muuna Takeena (Finland), S P Quill (Canada), Poems Neiderngasse (US/Switzerland), Snow Monkey (US),
Poetry Canada, Erbacce, White Leaf Review, BeWrite Books, Psychopoetica and others.
White Leaf Review has published an ebook The Citron House in 2007.
Email: Martin Jervis
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