Ken's Poetry

Treblinka

Dawn.
Rifles crack.
The Kamp Kommandos stir
down in their windowless world
beside the execution wall.
Screams and moans
their minds no longer hear.
The final pistol shot.

Their work
death’s work.
Tearing corpses from the pile
placing them on iron biers;
cassettes into fiery slot
whose song was not worth listening to,
these husks of men women and children
hate made insignificant.

Cruelty.
Deception.
Their life’s luggage still
stood beside the empty train
where those who never got this far
keep watch with death’s eyes.

Tank engine
exhaust.
No mistaking that
in the last desperate moments
love drew broken families
together, to die.
We cannot comprehend
how death felt for them.

Seeing
and hearing all,
the Kamp Kommandos shiver
below the execution wall
grimly clinging
to poor flames of life
before their turn comes
on the fire.