Vulgata: The Butterflies of Maidanek

The transformation had begun
beyond the gardens of nearby Lublin,
where a film of ash that dulled each village rooftop
was wiped away from the leaves of clipped roses
and shaken like folds from lace tablecloths.
One might have heard the curious rifts of jazz
in the distance blaring from state owned speakers.

Death was nothing more than the wall that stood in between.

Those who waited to be cocooned in it
were too weak to grieve over grass soup,
spooned into their sluggish swollen bodies.
They inched along like shadows
as if they might diminish
into the same grayed soil that hissed
blood and bones and rifle casings
into their dreamless hunger.

They had already begun to shed themselves
into piles of clothing, shoes and shorn hair,
gold fillings pried from molars,
melted down into shipments to Berlin.
Their loved ones folded and unfolded
from black and white images into a howl
that grew from the marrow of their bones,
and cursed the sky of impassive blue—
its deathwatch through steel meshed peepholes.

And yet, along walls emptied of humanity,
butterflies, hundreds and hundreds of butterflies!
A vast insurrection of flight foretold
beneath pebbles and children’s fingernails.
Prayers and post scripts carved
into wings splayed wide and fluttering free—
as if they knew,
as if somehow they all knew
that beyond the wall at which they scratched,
hope had reemerged to shimmer and soar
and whisper back its buoyant colors,
into every dark hold,
and every dormant updraft.