The rain is falling down
The sky is grey and bleak
Everywhere is silent
A cheerless, lonely town
.
Like ghosts along the pier
Like phantoms in the night
We can only cry and wait
For our ending to come near
.
No place for us to run
No place for us to hide
We can only hold each other
As history is spun
.
As we see our town in ashes
The baker’s store, the willow
The cobbled streets, a better time
That comes to me in flashes
.
And it includes a young man, grinning
A man that I have loved
With sparkling eyes and barking laugh
A way that made him winning
.
And when days were good we’d meet
In a summer valley
With dewy tress and singing creek
The only place I was complete
.
It was there that he first kissed me
It was there that he proposed
It was there that our hearts came together
And helped us both to see
.
It was out there in that glen
When war’s whispers finally came
We’d hear about it; its bloody trail
Every now and then
.
And he and I, we waited
For what we knew would come
The draft, the uniform, the soldier’s gear
The fight that we both hated
.
And when we said goodbye
In a lingering kiss
He whispered a sweet promise
And I could only cry
.
And so I watched him go
In a uniform we both loathed
But we knew, our time would come
My lover, my beau
.
But not long after he had left
New lines of war were drawn
And our lovely, carefree town
Suddenly, was bereft
.
For the enemy soldiers came
Took over our poor town
Used it as a battleground
And used us in their game
.
And like pawns, we were used
To help them win their war
A disposable town, pathetic people
A resource to be abused
.
So with optimism we responded
Hoping it would help
Hoping that our boys and men
Would receive what we corresponded
.
But nobody came to help
The battle lines drawn clear
The soldiers were here, here to stay
And they treated us like whelps
.
They used us as their servants
They abused us their leisure
Made us treat their wounds
Let nothing but observance
.
And anyone who disobeyed
Suddenly disappeared
As we became their slaves, their whores
Every whim to be obeyed
.
So when the gunshots rang
And the front lines started closer
We wondered if our men could return
As the bullets and shout all sang
.
And these soldiers were suddenly smart
When they looked at our old town
As they realized just what they could do
Se we could become a part
.
And now we play a part, in this wicked war
We became hostages of these men
Suddenly fine pieces
Better than before
.
We were given a warning
‘Be good to us’, they said
And now that we’ve been good
We’ve see the dawn of morning
.
And with the dawn came fire
As they burned down our poor town
They let the rain sting our faces
While they built our unmarked pyre
.
So now there’s little left
Of this place that we called home
Where children played, where people laughed
Our hearts torn with the theft
.
And now, while we wait
All sentenced to our death
I can only think of him
And what happened to our fate
.
Where a white dress waited
And a violin would play
Where a kiss would seal our hearts
A hope now desecrated
.
The barn where we once danced
Will now become our tomb
As these monsters light the fire
I think of his romance
.
And thus, I whisper my goodbye
I whisper ‘I love you’
And as I find my happy place
I let out a sweet sigh
.
And focus on the better times
Focus on the love
Focus on that valley
Where pain was once a crime
.
And as I twist the diamond ring
And think of his sweet promise
I can only hope that one day we’ll meet again
Up where the angels sing
Okay, so I know this isn’t my usual type of poem. Very dramatic, very dreary, very drastic. In truth, though, I wrote this months ago, and it sat on my computer because I was worried about putting such a touchy poem up.
Then I watched The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Suddenly, that very dramatic, dreary, drastic movie helped give me confidence in this poem, and it’s story.
I will be the first to admit that the atrocities of World War Two are very, very interesting to me. Not in a morbid way, but in the mere astonishment of what people will do to others. From the Nanking Massacre in 1937-1938, the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in 1944, and, of course, the murder of six million Jewish people, along with the masses of the mentally disabled, Romanian, gypsy, homosexual and other cultures killed in work camps throughout Europe. This also includes the horrors of what the Nazi party did under the orders of Hitler, including the twisted Josef Mengele who preformed brutal experiments on children.
However, there was also some light in that dark time. Viktor Frankl is one of my favorite psychologists; I find him to be an uplifting and highly intelligent man; a psychologist that was more human than say, some of the psychologists such as Freud andSkinner.
The horrors of war are awful, and many of them leave scars on many of us. However, there have been many, many other awful wars and massacres even recently. The Rwandan Genocide in 1994, The Srebrenica Massacre in 1995, and some massacres and genocides as recent as 2001. Hate still is in our world, and apparently, we don’t learn from our mistakes.
I guess what I’m trying to say here, is although I wrote this poem with one of the World Wars in mind, it honestly, could be any country at war, any place that has brutality. World War Two was hardly the end of such atrocities such as the concentration camps. All we can truly do is learn from our history, and not doom ourselves to repeat it.
Believe me when I say that I am not usually so ardent in my ideas of peace. But by doing two projects (Nanking and a all-too-short bit on the holocaust, here and here) and yet still reading about some of the awful things that go on in our world can make me a little upset.
So, there’s your summer history lesson for the day. I’ll be more light hearted later, but perhaps, sometimes, its good to introduce something for people to think about. Don’t think poorly of me for it.
Whispers of the Willow 