Waking Into History
I hear an angel
screaming, screaming.
If this is heaven,
can hell be far behind?-- for my son
You are born in another holocaust.
They are watching, watching.
It has all been recorded.
My memory’s not my own.
Son: having cried all night,
imitating us, you heave
a long unarticulated sigh
pregnant with emotion.
And this is what I think:
they tied a woman’s legs
to induce an endless labor,
fetus innocently murdering its mother,
slowly dying in its mother’s pain.
You are born in another holocaust.
They are watching, watching.
It has all been recorded.
My memory’s not my own.
Wife: having not slept in days,
rocking back and forth, you cry,
face blue and contorted, tearless
as a newborn baby’s.
And this is what I think:
they cracked the soft skull
of an infant, and locked it
living, screaming, in a room
with a woman for three days
to test the mortal limits
of her motherly endurance.
You are born in another holocaust.
They are watching, watching.
It has all been recorded.
My memory’s not my own.
Family: awakened in the night,
baby in hands, we stand
before the darkened mirror
of history like immigrants
staring out from an old photograph
fading into the past.
This is what I think:
they were murdered
in their sleep.
Page(s) 6-7
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