Loraine Saacks – poetry

LORAINE SAACKS

BEYOND THE CAVES

I’m deep underground in Chislehurst Caves, With Messerschmitts raining their bombs down in waves. Tea trolleys and bunks and medical teams, Air Raid Wardens, some clergy, a few frantic screams.

Huddled up in our haunt while the harsh Heinkels taunt I’m three and I think it’s good fun. How would I know, that while I’m lying low, My cousins are killed by the Hun?

My Grandpa is silent, he’s too shocked to speak My sorrowing Grandma has tears on her cheek. I’m of immigrant stock, barely four decades, Half my family in Poland are shunted by raids.

Yet, one lifetime later, I’m asked to embrace, To forget and forgive the supposed Master Race. I’ve inherited photos; viewed the Shoah website It’s my ‘living memory’ that I’m asked to blight. Should future millennia institute change,

And mind-sets of violence be spurned, Maybe such a truce would serve to diffuse, Warring factions where memories still burned. But while I’m still alive, my bloodline will hear,

How their forbears were smitten with fear. Historical footnotes, a tapestry yarn, airbrushing out wails in the wind, Will never erase the actions so base, of the inhuman tyrants who sinned.

Poems

NO VICTORY IN CHISLEHURST

The war was over, victory ours, Soldiers welcomed home with flowers. But were we whole? Were we content? We children knew not what grief meant.

Our dear beloved matriarch Became reclusive, lost her spark. Her kith and kin could not take flight, For Bergen-Belsen was their plight.

Grandma knew, by letters vanished, Her loved ones to the camp were banished. No word was heard – her heart bore pain; Who could conceive whole families slain?

We saw our grandma’s weeping eyes, We heard her moaning, anguished cries. But we were small, all fours and fives, No-one explained about smashed lives.