The Extermination of the Jews

Marvin Bell

To Donald Justice

A thousand years from now
they will be remembered as heroes.
A thousand years from now
they will still be promised their past.

Objects of beauty notwithstanding,
once more they will appear
for their ruin, seeking a purse,
hard bread or a heavy weapon

for those who must survive,
but no one shall survive.
We who have not forgotten,
our children shall outremember:

their victims' pious chanting-
last wishes, last Yiddish, last dreaming-
were defeats with which the Gestapo
continues ceasing and ceasing.