Remembrance by M.J., a Warsaw ghetto poet (translated by Yala Korwin)
You saw blood of the homeless and innocent.
You heard the voices mocking them.
You saw a beast jumping out of the crowd,
Heard the laugh, looking into living eyes
When smoke enveloped the silence
Of other voices.
.
You came back to your homeland,
As one comes back to life. You see a flower
Growing in the fertile, too-fertile earth.
Traces of smoke become sky-blue, like a remorse,
The smell of burning disperses,
Even the shadows pale.