The tale of sunken silence-Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen

Composed in November 2019

(Notes:- Hitler’s tyranny. The massacre of Jews. Catching them from their secret hideouts and sending
to Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. Those concentration camps, those gas chambers ever vomiting the
dictator’s wrath of poison upon humanity. That history is an eternal reminder to all generations -
‘wherever authority, be of any kind, cleaves, man clogs, he wages, nations collapse, deserts they turn,
carcasses they amass).

This poem won the Poiesis Award 2020 coming under the Rabindranath Tagore Award International
(RBT2020) sponsored by Poiesisonline.com and Xpresspublications.com and managed by Mr.
Gopakumar Radhakrishnan.

Behind the curtains shadows moved, hearts whispered, life tempestuous,

Beyond the walls, the approaching steps, fearful, life a vanishing trail, impetuous.
But for the sudden knock, apparitions standing, muzzles pointing, finally wrapping,
Life was a dateless diary, a sway, an indefinite pause, clueless, a-whooping.

And, from their secret hideouts, surrendered, to the darkness of crypt,

As dead livestock, they travelled to unknown shores, mute and withered.
Clumsy, crunchy, frigid, arid, thirsty and feather hewed,
They arrived the chambers of death, their dreams stolen, tattered.

A loaf of bread, a sip of tea, no wash, no water, just a sprinkle!

A piece of wool to ward off winter, a loincloth and no more to wear.
In dark cells, oppressive dormitories, in frozen thoughts, beyond distinctions,
They met incalculable moments, nightmares following, in total destruction.

Morning muster rolls, standing nude, shyness vaporizing, shivering,

The dogs ever charging, no escape ever possible and tethering.
Niggling jobs, cloud of charcoal dust enveloping, suffocating,
Typhus life reducing, mothers and children parting…. bewailing.
Annihilation, of justice and humanity, the tyrant very pertinacious.
Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen - those furnaces ever pernicious.
Flames swallowing, blood hounds continually barking, demons dictating,
Millions perished, eagles militated, chicanery to the core prevailed.

They were impelled, to the vale of death from their gardens fairest,
For one reason - by chance of birth being birds of the same feather,
As different from the dictator’s feather and flap, flip and stare.
My voices, my religion, only mine and mine - wherever authority, be of any kind, cleaves,
Man clogs, he wages, nations collapse, deserts they turn, carcasses they amass.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

1. Impetuous: marked by force and violence of movement or action

2. Whoop: to utter the cry or call of an animal (such as an owl - symbolic of death)
3. Hewn/hewed: to cut with blows of a heavy cutting instrument
4. Tethering: the limit of one’s strength or resources.
5. Bewail: to express deep sorrow/lamentation.
6. Pertinacious: adhering resolutely to an opinion/design.
7. Pernicious: highly injurious or destructive/deadly. (archaic): wicked.
8. Chicanery: Trickery. A piece of sharp practice: Eg: resorted to political chicaneries.