There Are No Words
There Are No Words
Photo and poem by Beth Cortez-Neavel
It seems melodramatic
for me to talk about
Auschwitz
and how I still see the
black, yawning
small dusty doors of the ovens
or the endless rows of
slanted, red
broken or bent brick chimneys
at inopportune times of my day.
But I was there,
walking that same path
They walked
from the train platform.
The path that cut straight through block B-two-D
dividing the women in half.
I turned left where they turned,
before the electrified barbed wire of “Mexico,”
headed straight for the birch trees.
Birkenau.
Straight for the Zyklon B.
I hid behind my camera then
there were no words to speak
what I will never comprehend
click click click.
I still avoid the questions
“How was the trip? Did you have a good time?”
Yeah,
it was good,
I guess.
Straight from the shoulder, non-melodramatic account, made all the more personal by its reticence. The questions from others, “How was the trip? Did you have a good time?”, are almost as impossible to comprehend as the creation of the camps. Good going, Beth.