“You Who Live and Hear”

“You Who Live and Hear”

Leo Yankevich

Some of the poems in this e-book have appeared or are to appear in the following publications, to whose editors grateful acknowledgement is extended:

Chronicles, Iambs & Trochees,
Mandrake Poetry Review,
The New Formalist,
and
The Susquehanna Quarterly


© 2004 by Leo Yankevich


Published by The New Formalist


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Moscow, 1928

Through iron bars and sooty glass,
you see a square of muddy snow,
where cawing rooks and jackdaws pass
over the heads of those who go
no further than the prison walls—
mothers, fathers, weeping wives
bearing bags of fruit and rolls
to those whose candour cost their lives.

Red Star, 1933

The Arctic wind impales us without halt
and in our wounds the devil himself leers.
The star above the gulag burns like salt
until we lose all track of months and years.

And yet we sigh again the wry insult
we let slip into comrade Stalin’s ears.
We sigh until we sigh it by default
and wrinkles are the riverbeds of tears.

Barcelona, 1936

Perhaps there’s mercy in the skies,
although the Spaniards have seen none.
The tears of horror in their eyes
reflect the fury of the sun
lifting the curtain over dawn.
They know that Orlov’s Reds were there:
a priest lies bludgeoned on the lawn,
and Christian Spain lies struck at prayer.

Kolyma, 1937

I see your noble face behind barbed wire,
looking out at endless taiga, greeted
only by cold. The laughter of the liar
who put you there is still loud in your ears,
although in far-off Moscow now—he’s seated,
the hooked-nosed slayer of the highborn rich,
sadist and defiler of Slavic daughters,
egalitarian savant and snitch.

Who do you think will recall the martyrs,
the frightened faces and the countless tears,
the forgotten dead of Russia and Ukraine?
Who will write the history of their pain?

“You who live and hear,” your voice falters,
still so frightened after all these years.

Neighbours, Eastern Poland, 1940

I turn my shoulder to the grey and think
of Yosel, son of Saul Rabinsky, how
he slammed the doors of crowded cattle cars
bound for Siberia, although the faces
inside were those of neighbours, Catholic Poles.

How haplessly they looked back through the cracks,
their petty gentry voices cursing him
and the red star on his cone-shaped traitor’s cap,
their love of Poland beyond his comprehension,
their foolishness not worthy of his grief.

He did not know few would survive the journey
and those who did would perish in the gulags,
their tundra-bitten bodies heaped beneath
Lavrentii Beria’s orders, like forgotten
enemies of a freedom-loving state.

The son of Saul Rabinsky did not know
the Wehrmacht would attack within a year
and soon behind them come the Waffen SS
to mock the bearded rabbis of the town
and herd its Jews into a killing field.

He did not know he’d be betrayed by neighbours,
who, in a cabal of silence and revenge,
would watch the gendarmes drag him through the square,
neighbours with whom he’d played and gone to school
and whose unbridled hatred matched his own.

Vengeance Is Mine, Says the Lord, 1943

in memory of the German and Russian soldiers
buried together in mass graves during the battle of Stalingrad

If but the sun had burned less brightly
upon the faces of the dead
He saw heaped high that winter day
inside a pit dug in a field,
one could say who was good, who bad,
who was a sinner, who a saint,
but those He saw were saved in death
and share one grave beneath His land.

With Blood on his Hands,
Commissar Y. Raichman Ponders
the Forest of the Dead at Katyn, 1943

A Nazi lie and Hitler’s plot?—
The forest sighs but gives no answers.
Twelve thousand Polish officers rot,
grandsons of Sobieski’s lancers,
reactionary anti-Semites,
too dead to reach for thoughts or guns,
or, in the fragrant dark of spring nights,
to father patriotic sons.

Koniuchy, Eastern Poland, 1944

Perhaps there are real angels who assist
the ghosts of martyrs to the other side,
since what is left behind cannot resist
the flames of hell? A family of three died
slowly at the hands of hateful men,
and Yaakov Prenner, holding match and gas,
looks at the residue of pain: a ten
inch block of wood lodged in the father’s ass,
skin peeled from the mother’s neck and back,
brain matter from the infant on the floor.
He knows the enemy will soon attack,
and that if caught he won’t survive the war.
In Yiddish he commands his men to pour,
to strike, and like Lot, never to look back.

Gleiwitz, 1945

A boy of thirteen wears the pitch black pants
of German scouts. Some women look with glee
and try to drown his cries. They curse in chants.
They’re Jewish guards from State Security
who are too full of hate to want to hear
that he’s too young to be a Nazi, his face
the hairless face of innocence, a tear
on his cheek his only shield. And still, they race
to pock his tender flesh with cigarettes,
delighting Lilith-like in the cruel scene.
They almost feel the pangs of something higher,
but they have come this far without regrets:
They douse his light blond hair with gasoline
and free him with the mercy of their fire.

Somewhere Over Germany, 1945

At the gates of heaven
he did not know the names
beyond the bombing bay.

But many miles away
he could still see the flames
judging the dead in Dresden.

After the Expulsions

Gleiwitz, 1946
The old Romanesque church in Petersdorf,
closed since the Germans left the neighbourhood,
crumbles in the pouring acid rain.
Above, no bells toll for its dead; but stain
upon stain marks the stones where Mary’s scarf
rests at the bare feet of its heavy rood.

Poland, New Year’s Day, 1982

The final snow of the year, riddled and hard,
assailed by wind and rain, still covers the field,
while heaven above, a milky upturned ashtray,
lingers like a promise never fulfilled.

Smoke rises past the limbs of walking trees
toward blocks of flats that are a thousand greys.
Coal miners cough laments down muddy streets
to greasy taverns, and in shop displays

Christmas trees thirst for drink in dented pots.
Coal hills lie waiting for ice picks and shovels
as flocks of children drag ramshackle sleds
toward the toppled ruins of Eskimo hovels.

And at the roadside shelter Jesus sleeps
in the cradle of his weeping mother’s arms,
the light that leaks through small cracks in the roof—
forsaken as the sparrows that chant him psalms.

Jenin, 2002

The leaves take flight this autumn
like rumours from the past.
The first rot at the bottom
of heaps hushed by the last.

No Flowers, No Doves

When we entered the burning city
charred corpses greeted us.
A child’s hand dangled from a scorched tree
and the twisted wreckage of a bus
mocked the stillness of the sky.
Gunner gagged, Ski scratched his head,
neither understanding why
he had to liberate the dead.

A Warning to Dissidents

Yes, pretty soon now they’ll be at your door.
They’ve orders and a warrant after all.
It doesn’t matter. You’ll be on the floor,
your wife and children having watched you fall.

Just then you’ll notice fallen scraps and crumbs,
the beauty of your wife’s perfect pale feet,
the Celtic Crosses on your daughter’s thumbs,
the food above that you will never eat.

Your thoughts will have become a crimson pond
that flows out of your gagged and bleeding head
until you find yourself afloat, beyond
the reach of billyclubs and flying lead.

The Last Silesian

Above us: cawing rooks and grey clouds.
Around us: leafless trees and falling snow.
It’s late in January, 60 years
since Gleiwitz-Petersdorf was liberated.

Anne, a frail and tiny woman of eighty,
and the last Silesian on our street,
points her left hand toward the frozen ground
and rests her right upon a walking stick.

—“When Stalin’s army came, the NKVD
tortured, raped and murdered our people.
Both of my parents were among the dead
buried here inside a mass grave.”—

In her sad voice there are hints of dialect.
—“Later on, Poles from the East exhumed them,
planted trees, and built this lovely park.”—
The dialect of the dead, and the vanquished.

About the author

Leo Yankevich lives with his wife and three sons in Gliwice, Poland, where he works as a translator. His poems are known throughout the world.

Books by Leo Yankevich

The Language of Birds; Pygmy Forest Press, 1994
Grief's Herbs (translations after the Polish of Stanislaw Grochowiak); The Mandrake Press, 1995
The Gnosis of Gnomes; The Mandrake Press, 1995
Epistle from The Dark; The Mandrake Press, 1996
The Golem of Gleiwitz; The Mandrake Press, 1998
The Unfinished Crusade; The Mandrake Press, 2000
The Bird-Headed Monster; forthcoming in 2004