The Never Again Lady
Author: Bill Roberts
I’m in love with a raven-haired woman
I saw in a movie not long ago.
She visits me frequently in sleep, seeking
my protection. It was an amateur movie,
made by professional killers during a war,
depicting life, or the moments before
the end of life, at one of their camps
of concentration outside Germany.
This lovely woman was completely
naked, visibly terrified, attempting pitiably
to cover her breasts and black pubis.
I was mesmerized by the jumpy scenes,
stunned by the basic cruelty one people
could inflict on another, represented by
this lovely lady, beautiful even in her silent
horror, though scream she must have -
no sound accompanied the jittery footage.
The theater where this and similar films
play wasn’t a modern plex of theaters but
the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
I confronted many horrors that sweltering day:
a ghastly-blue cattle car in which Jews
were transported, piles of old shoes,
rumpled clothing, broken eyeglasses,
and a haystack of multicolored hair,
handwritten letters questioning why
such horrors were happening, so much else
incriminating the perpetrators of so many
vile and indescribably savage acts.
I’m not sure if you’d care to visit this sacred
place that commemorates mankind’s atrocities.
Certainly the movie of that lone lady would
haunt you as it does me so many nights.
Yes, I love her, though we never met.
I miss her terribly, weep at her loss.
(Published in the Spring 2005 issue of Main Street Rag)
Note: Our visit to the Holocaust Museum in the summer of 2003 was a deja vu event much like our first sight of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in summer 1993 – staggering in its emotional impact. Permitted the time now in retirement to sit and think back, it’s still hard to imagine how people – mainly the Germans but also their collaborators and supporters (many hidden behind masks of innocence) – could muster so much hatred to wantonly kill people so horribly as they did. You have to pause and reflect: those villains were human, highly cultured, advanced thinkers, yet they practiced a mass murder tirade the likes of which defy any reason whatsoever. And today, we find those who, likemindedly, say it, the Holocaus, never happened. Oh, my. To those I say, visit the Museum in D.C., see for yourselves….if you dare. The woman I describe in the poem was very real, still visits me on occasion. Try as I might, alas, I can offer no protection. It’s too late. Best I can do is remember, as all good people must.
