A Last Look at the Moon

The walls of the train were hard wood--too hard to break free.
But harder still were the guards that would have pursued, and beaten,
And brought back would-be escapers to the fate that soon would be.
The bitterness was too deep for religious hope to sweeten;
Skating on the raven rim of strange eternity.
Those hard wooden walls--knotted and chipped--one might brush a hand
Across the surface, just to feel for a moment that reality was still real;
Perhaps a splinter would pierce the tender flesh of a finger, as a reprimand--
And the little drop of blood that would ooze, the sharp sting of pain would appeal,
And say to the dark forces: I am!  Now, in the grip of fear,
The pain would be a proof of life--as real as the feel of life's fleet sand.
The train stopped--all off.
Then there came the slow march in a dense line of harried humans,
Compelled to enter an unknown end--
Walking, worlds within worlds, upon cold ground, beneath a sky star-strewn;
The slow shuffle, 
With demon-like guards pushing and pounding, barking and frowning--
Then the overhang of stone
Above the door that opened like a pitch-black mouth that would swallow foe and friend:
How suddenly the heart felt all alone.
Then the old professor lost his intellectual skeptic peace,
And to his still-loved and still-feared God his mouth made moan.
The walls of stone on either side of the door were cold and hard;
And God was still silent. 
Then only absolute abject helplessness,
Which the old professor felt futilely in every pulse-beat of his living heart,
Fastened upon the long-unbelieved hope, like a disappearing mist.
The sweet night air felt cool and full of love and life;
It seemed impossible that it should harbor such a hell--
That this end for life could ever have been meant.
The stone was hard and cold: it could break bones;
And striking it would bloody the knuckles of any frail fleshly fist--
Oh, God!  God!--You are needed!  "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want."
The old words come back to trembling mortal lips like a last-hope chant--
The desperate praying of a man who long ago had ceased to believe in God--
And long ago had ceased even to hope.  First, he had suffered the loss of his faith;
Finally, he had suffered even the loss of all hope--long ago--and, yet, only yesterday--
His once bright hope for a caring cosmic Power that might save from the grave.
But he must hold on to hope now, for death in the Nazi gas chamber is coming soon.
If the glorious soul of human life must perish utterly,
Then what can anyone claim that anyone ultimately wins or owns?  Spiritless sod.
The guards like ghouls are watching: he must go in now, and suffer death;
In mere minutes, the poison gas will begin to fill his nostrils,
And choke off his now-living gift of breath.
He has no choice but to go; pleasure is pain; the world like a shadow spins.
He must go down the stone steps toward the terrible open door,
From whence, living, he knows he will return no more.
His special spirit, his unique self--no one else just like him in all the universe--
Will be regarded as just another sand-grain of life dropped in the desert of death--
Just one more to add to the statistics, among the millions who were likewise gassed.
Just one more among the many millions who die or are killed by any cause--
From those relatively fortunate ones who die of old age, to those who die of cancer--
Or in some other way, even before our brief life-spans can be fulfilled, are killed--
Lost and forgotten among many millions whose heart-beats have been stilled.
He feels valuable and irreplaceable, special and wonderful, of infinite worth,
As he begins the walk toward losing his future and present to the primordial past.
But, suddenly, he stops; he pirouettes for a moment,
And glances backward and upward--before the final horror begins--
For a last loving look at the bright dark-edged circle of the full silver sphere of the moon.


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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Wednesday, November 13, 1991  4:25 pm
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael LP.  Al rights reserved