Dachau

There is a gate in Dachau, with an infamous inscription: "Arbeit Macht Frei" - "Work makes Free". A particularly wicked turn by the Nazis who built the camp...and a striking one at that. I last saw Dachau the summer after my senior year of high school.

There are words on the gate,
          and as you enter,
     surrounded now with green things
and growing, life
              and the soft silence
                              of summer.

Feet mark stones
                  as ever before, passing,
unheard-of pausing to wonder,
          to ponder, remember
the words of the gate.
                       Don't linger;
     there is blood in this ground - 
             can you see it still?

Read words as you enter, 
               know the wide vista is false,
         as empty as memory.
Wishes are whispered like prayers,
                like the thoughts unspoken,
      unheard, unwanted here --
forgotten now.

There are green things now
           and growing, richly fed
       on blood and tears
                      Does it know,
  this verdancy,
         of what its sustenance is borne?
                Does it care?
                        It is summer, soft
and hot, silent and still.

          They lie empty here, blood spilling,
soaking into the ground beneath.
     Clean gravel and paint,
                  dust raked over death 
            cannot conceal it,
it is still here.
               But see the reaching branches,
        plants live and stretching for the sun --
Work
     has made them free,
                           after all.
25-11-02
"Arbeit macht frei"