I had fallen in line, obedient to the rules of the museum at Auschwitz.
We entered a room filled,
floor to ceiling, with cases containing
what had been taken from them;
so unsuspecting some must have been
as they shuffled, much as we do today, not knowing
what horrors would unfold:

Suitcases neatly marked, each with a name
and ahome address, and all that that implies;
some had come in with the canes,
the crutches, the prosthetics, now piled in the next case;
and then the eyeglasses, broken and twisted; and then
the hair, and on we went, as a grey numbness
crept over me like a shield from what we humans cannot bear,
so much horror, so much
loss, so much
humanness; so much reality;

but after all that, it was the case near the end
that penetrated all those barriers the numbness had built;
it was as if all those insidious yellow stars
they had to wear had suddenly converged and
imploded into utter blackness
within the marrow of my own bones,

and these are the only words, the only emotion
I had left:

A lot of good it did those holy souls, 
trembling hands packing, perhaps gently smoothing
before closing the lid,
prayer shawls,
white-tassled and blue and full of trust
for so unholy a journey. What could they have thought,
and how could they have known
that between the train tracks and the impending
shower of cloud,
there would be no shawls,
there would be no time 
even for prayer–

Nie wieder, the sign at the museum entrance reads–

But today, I can only remember
Kyrie.
Kyrie eleison

Have mercy, Lord–
We said we woud never forget–