Children of Dachau

Looking down from the footbridge,
the Wurm runs free and clear to the bottom;
autumn leaves trace out the current,
pass beneath the bridge, and pirouette
under a slack strand of rusted barbwire.

German schoolchildren,
paired by friendship and affection,
walk on stones where barracks once stood,
muted piano keys of stone,
playing the camp like a sad ballad.
Their teacher raises an arm to gather them,
a sermon of silence: Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.

And so the sadness and the silence turn to cheer,
and out and down the Romerstrabe they run,
bookbags stuffed and bouncing on their backs
(Whenever books are burned men also
in the end, are burned). Beneath a
lineal row of chestnut trees in fall,
those children hurry liquid on their way,
clean, pink faces, feet kicking paths through leaves,
and I smell the pleasing woodsmoke of a nearby chimney.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, December 7, 1986)