Here is one by Leo Haber from Blood to Remember, an anthology of poems about the Holocaust.
Sanctification *
Let us mourn the murder of children together,
You and I, in the graceful form of the rhymed
Sonnet, dimensions of meaning, rigidly timed
Ritual of comfort at the brutal end of one’s tether.
Young Alena Synkova tethered to L
410 spoke for all the children in free
Verse and fourteen short lines. Listen! See
the child in her innocent wisdom outwitting hell.
“Listen! / The boat whistle has sounded now / And we
Must sail / Out toward an unknown port / We’ll sail a long
Long Way / And dreams will turn to truth . . . / Just look up
To heaven / And think about the violets.” See
The child in the chamber of gas, listen to her song,
Mourn with the Kaddish; bless with the Kiddush cup.
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*The quotations in this poem are from a fourteen-line poem, “To Olga,” by L410, the number of one of the children’s homes in the Terezín concentration camp, circa 1943–44.
(Blood to remember: American poets on the Holocaust / edited by
Charles Adés Fishman)
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