Inarticulations

Marianne Bluger
From:   Summer Grass. London, Ontario: Brick Books, 1992.

i

I want you     to imagine
in a country field
twelve oaks standing
ponderous with age

suppose they are the tribes

it's hot
but don't look to the shade
look to the burden
boughs in the lazy breeze
heavy with life they are
weighted with life
the heft of it
half breath half corpse
stirring

the people is dust
 

ii

Once they were with us
they were
children of the yellow star

but shadowy turnings only
the future gel
clouded with meaning
when they shrieked
at tag on Bremen green

their residue is stubborn
sadness now
silence
—nothing to tell

and their laughter improvident
bells my mute cousins
ring but I cannot hear
because they are sealed
behind glass-walled forever
 

iii

I once saw black and white
flickering footage
of the charnel scene at Dachau
tangled corpses heaped torsos trunks
branched limbs twig fingers inert
clutter the human
body as litter

a terrible stillness
of death in the grass

and once a film of Rudolph Hess
sitting in Spandau in a topcoat
talking like a civilized man
 

iv

Don't write it don't risk
faking from chaos
narrative links
don't give the incubus
fascist ideas

              but the enemy wanted us

he wanted all the unborn children
for his sacrifice

              the enemy wanted us

              he wanted us to hate him
              I refuse*

 
 
* Elie Wiesel, Prophet

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Marianne Bluger's works copyright © to The Estate of Marianne Bluger.