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Robert Lindner
The current war brings back the stories that my mother told.
The Whispers of War
The mind is full of sound.
But it’s a cacophony that has drowned
The whisper that can’t rise
Above the noise. It tries,
But we just hear the cries
Of terror or sadness, we may have found
Our thoughts stuck in today,
As we attempt to write that poem, play
Or novel, perhaps set
Before madness will let
War start. We have to get
Our words from the whispers, but they must say,
Loudly, so all can hear,
“The war’s coming!” Before bombs fall too near
For our actors to run.
But there may be no one
Who’ll hear till war’s begun.
Then it’s too late. Then whispers disappear,
Becoming cries and screams
Of reality, not nightmarish dreams
Of war and death, where there
Is the “Danse Macabre.”
But it’s too late to scare
The ghosts that were not there, but now it seems
Are everywhere. They sing.
They dance. They are no longer whispering.
They cry, they look aghast.
But time for that has passed.
Since “The die has been cast.”
Caesar said, when his armies were crossing
The Rubicon. But in
Our story, another war will begin,
In history. Warsaw
Is being bombed. They saw
It coming, but the flaw
Was Germany’s “Mesnée d'Hellequin,
The Wild Hunt of Folk Lore
That became the Hellequin of this war.
That drove Germanic hate
And opened up Hell’s gate.
And now it’s sealed their fate.
But the whispers tell me it’s too late for
Me to do anything
About the history, the whispering.
I can’t tell more than what
I learned before time shut
Off all the whispers, but
I can try. The bombings are beginning.
It’s September the first
Of Nineteen thirty-nine, we, Jews, are cursed
By the whispers and glass
Breaking and waiting gas
Chambers. But time will pass
And now it’s time for that play, we’ve rehearsed.
“Away from the windows!”
A voice shouts. Helen’s sister-in-law Rose
Enters, as Helen plays
Her violin. Then Rose says,
“You must come.” But Helen’s gaze
Is defiant. And Helen’s music grows
Louder. It’s Bach’s Chaconne.
Her flying bow dances, as sirens moan
In the distance and light
Searches the sky. The night
Is broken by the bright
Flashes of antiaircraft fire thrown
At the bombers that can
Be seen and have been heard since they began
Attacking. “Keep playing?”
Rose asks, “What’s the worst thing,
Perhaps, you’ll break a string?”
Then Helen laughed and that’s when they both ran
To the stairs and went out
Of the first scene. Of course, there was a shout
Of “Helen! Where are you?”
To snap Helen into
Action. It’s Manny, who
Is Helen’s husband. His voice brought about
The women’s response. Then
The next scene begins. There are bombs again.
But they’re a distant sound.
In the room underground
Where a family’s found
Sheltering and that’s where Rose and Helen
Enter. Manny waits for
His wife and his sister Rose. There are more
There in the cellar and
There’ll be another land
To tell this tale that spanned
Six years of horror before a world war
Would end. But now the First
Of September in a Warsaw that’s cursed
For the Jews that are there
Offering their Prayer
For Sabbath, as the air
Fills with whispers of the play we’ve rehearsed.
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