Kristallnacht Re-visioned (1)

Belie the truth, and year after year
it magnifies what people fear.
Unlike a mirror, twice the size,
reflecting back, some don't realize
that what they're told is not sincere.

History's paint brush’ll often smear
the truth until it disappears.
So much spoken under the guise
of fact. Where is the truth?

Verity's covered by veneer,
so slickly offered as "crystal clear."
Its colored, distorted, twisted, revised.

Time and events will disappear,
never to know what underlies
the truth.

Kristallnacht Re-visioned (2)

History’s senseless, hateful incision
Allowed by humanity’s indecision
From the shattered glass, Israel has risen
New birth, new covenant, a new circumcision
With faith and duty we must fight revision.


Kristallnacht Re-visioned (3)

Tongue extended, looking skyward,
I spot a six-pointed flake
landing and melting
our innocence away.
The blood-stained snow
beneath a history lesson’s boots
cannot be typed for purity 
while droplets 
from the eyes of the watchers
dry unnoticed.

Scattered further still
from the windswept mountains,
millions of broken shards as markers,
they’re etched on dunes…
the Diaspora sculpted.
We try to read what's written on the sand.

Tides change
and on Mediterranean beaches 
hollow castles
will be washed away
unless we remember
to save their names,
to save the grains
from the undertow of apathy
that would have us forget
the "Never Again".

© Norman S. Pollack    November 8, 1998

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht