Hi, Anny:
"Kalinivka/Prymsl/Dora" were written in the last week, and are not part of the new chap, although I have written about the camps before and invoke the Warsaw Ghetto on my new CD . I am now writing more poems springing from interviews with my relatives, some survivors of Northausen, and one a teenager during the siege of Stalingrad.
I grew up with vivid stories about the second world war, Stalin, Siberia, purges, and the camps. They had a huge influence on me. I? can't forget this history as it was part of?everything, seemed to touch everything I knew growing up, and informed everything about my family. In their old age, my relatives look to me to chronicle what I can before it is lost. And I am trying, in my own way, although not always with textbook accuracy, but with imagination.
Thanks for reading my snaps. I will post more as they develop, hopefully in the correct format for a change ; )
Best,
Larissa
?
-----Original Message-----
From: Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 30 May 2008 12:57 am
Subject: Re: SNAP: Kalinivka
Do these poems belong to your latest collection, Larissa? I am very
interested in (I do not know if I can define them in this way) "historical"
poems, I mean poems that remind us of history. The two world wars have made
Europe the way we know it. And yet, they are eternally forgotten. Even if I
tend to agree with what has by now become a saying: that after two world
wars there is no poetry left, also quoted by Alan Sondheim, and by me
several times.
The parents of those who are my age have lived WW 2 when they were already
adults. How can we justify ourselves and our thoughts if we deny or forget
its existence?
Thank you Larissa for these writings. And whenever you feel like, please
post some more.
On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Larissa Shmailo <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Kalinivka
>
>
>
> Kalinivka, Kalinivka: The ground over the mass graves is hard, the soft
> grass
> grows. The Ukrainian Guard, boy and girl, make love, happy to be alive. In
> the Ukraine,
> collectivized, they walked on corpses. And the Germans alone protest, the
> father tells the girl. Siberia, purges. Like
> the Irish, their parents collaborated eagerly;
> Hitler fought their masters. Now here, Kalinivka. The mass graves crack
> with green life. 1941 is forgotten
> by the summer of '43. She is 19, pregnant soon.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Prymsl
>
>
>
> By 1943, the ghetto holds the few not deported, living in
> tunnels, basements, caves, the hiding ones, the ones who know. All the
> rest to camps in Poland, Germany,
> or dead. The boy no longer likes the girl, but through her, he got his
> Kapo
> job. Even his mother says, marry. Have a child. The female Kapo bears a boy
> through the camps,
> Prymsl, through the unknown tombs of Poland, the unmarked graves, the
> walls marked with Jewish blood, the bloody broken nooses, the dark rain.
> She
> wants the boy to marry her, he makes excuses, says, the Germans won't
> permit.
> That the child will die soon after the war, that she will beat her head
> upon
> the grave until it bleeds, that sorrow is unknown. The death of the Jewish
> children is unseen. Poland
> is always green.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dora
>
>
>
> Germany, Harz
> Mountains. The Germans turn now, now SS. The war is failing. Fewer
> the slaves to command, the girl, heavy with child, translates, working,
> starving, carried in rail carts for miles to build the V-2s. A rachitic
> Jewess
> cleans the barracks, the boy's eye turns, with pity, with lust; he gives
> her
> bread. From Erfurt to the extension camp, Buchenwald's new Dora,
> Northausen. Here they spare the
> rope to hang. All are hungry, the Germans too. The Allies bomb the
> industrial
> camp. Liberation. Rows of corpses, the eternal rows, line Nordhausen. The
> Germans are forced to respect the dead. Kalinivka, Pryml, the unseen dead,
> now
> here in respectful symmetry, no longer piled in heaps, rectangular, marked.
> The
> flowers grow, the burgers sing, "After every December, there comes a new
> Spring.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Larissa Shmailo
>
>
> "The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line."
>
> -Rollo May
>
>
>
> http://www.myspace.com/larissashmailoexorcism
>
> http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
>
> http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .
>
--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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