Camp Fires (Poetry)

Cattle trucks of human livestock
jolt along a narrow track
past the village, through the forest:
empty wagons rattle back

from the camp where nearby peasants
work in fields that border fear;
fences claim unfeeling limits;
silence hangs its numb veneer.

Crops grow, undisturbed by terror
drifting on the tainted breeze:
the harvest pays no heed to horror
happening beyond the trees.

Air absorbs the screams of victims,
earth accepts their powdered bones,
unimpressed by death and neutral
as the flame that blackens stones.

The scattered tribes of Israel hunted
down by wealth and shibboleth,
dogged by Shylock’s reputation —
greedy for his pound of flesh;

driven like dumb beasts to slaughter,
naked, shaved and dispossessed
of dignity — God’s chosen people
sacrificed at hate’s behest.

Thick as bonfire smoke in Salem,
chimneys spread their choking news
and the stench of burning corpses
tells the fate of vanished Jews.

In the fields the witness trembles,
sees the accusations rise
like a list of names translated
into smoke that fills the skies.