Anthony Hecht(1923–2004)
The Book of Yolek
Wir haben ein Gesetz,
Und nach dem Gesetz soil er sterhen.5
The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal,
Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk
Down the fern trail, it doesn't matter where to,
Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,
And among midsummer hills have set up camp
In the deep bronze glories of declining day.
Y o u r e m e m b e r , p e a c e f u l l y , a n e a r l i e r d a y
In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:
A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.
That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;
More than you dared admit, you thought of home;
No one else knows where the mind wanders to.
T h e f i f t h o f A u g u s t , 1 9 4 2 .
It was morning and very hot. It was the day
They came at dawn with rifles to The Home
For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal
Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk
I n c l o s e f o r m a t i o n o f f t o a s p e c i a l c a m p .
How often you have thought about that camp,
As though in some strange way you were driven to,
And about the children, and how they were made to walk,
Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day
Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal
And shamble between armed guards to his long home.
We're approaching August again. It will drive home
The regulation torments of that camp
Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,
The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,
T h e q u i t e e x t r a o r d i n a r y h e a t o f t h e d a y
They all were forced to take that terrible walk.
W h e t h e r o n a s i l e n t , s o l i t a r y w a l k
O r a m o n g c r o w d s , f a r o f f o r s a f e a t h o m e ,
Y o u w i l l r e m e m b e r , h e l p l e s s l y , t h a t d a y ,
A n d t h e s m e l l o f s m o k e , a n d t h e l o u d s p e a k e r s o f t h e c a m p .
Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.
H i s u n u t t e r e d n a m e w i l l i n t e r r u p t y o u r m e a l .
P r e p a r e t o r e c e i v e h i m i n y o u r h o m e s o m e d a y .
Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,
He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.