A poem sparked by a sad story of a Holocaust survivor, hate, Anti-Semitism, Racism, ghosts of the past, and dealing with personal demons.


Different Realities...




Reminiscent of the Rhone--a river divine echoeing Vincent...

two lovers after they get engaged:

laughing, loving, embracing


a diamond ring given to a woman with guilt haunting her...


of her anti-semitic dad, a professor who had the "solution" when it
came to the Jews...

found out while transcribing...

a father who humiliated her for mistakes

a husband who was no different...


could not help the resistance because of the instinct of survival...


Faced with a choice--which really wasn't one:

one child can live...the other must die...

Compassion created by a lie...

the ghosts of guilt...which led to her death...

feeling a duty of fidelty to a man crazed,

a man riddled with paranoid schizophrenia--no medication

to ease, control the mental pain...


research scientist--trained at Harvard...

only a dream


a delusion, no one's purported scheme


two people caught up in lies, drowning in fantasy:


one longing for academia,

the other for a caring, kind father who adored her...


a Jewish man haunted by atrocities

a Polish woman haunted by personal realities



a man though suffering with paranoid schizophrenia was seen

as a child prodigy--but sometimes with great genius comes

madness--an unbalance between talent and sanity--

echoes of Vincent sound loudly...

a man who is later recognized as a master, had a
serious bout of hallucinations, which led to a missing ear...

a Jewish man suffering from an illness that could have
been managed, controlled today...
a man, who in the Nazis eyes, would have been the
perfect poster boy, a member of a race Aryan...
except for the fact that he had brown eyes, and that
he was a "Jew".

the Commandant said that people from "southern climes" had
lower intelligence, their talent, potential had no existence...
West Indian, African, Australian Aboriginals a "burden"
to the white man...

An Excuse To Be Exterminated...


People Who Were The "Unwantables"...

Polish people also fit that category...


Nazis: Polish people, "Poles" were dirty, animals, inferior


Yet Sophie had blonde hair, blue eyes, features

"Perfectly German":

Yet she was still sent to Auschwitz--irony building upon irony
Her lover, Nathan obsessed with the genocide...

Why Sophie went free...

But was she really? Her sanity being strangled by
by ghosts of guilt

These very apparitions that led to her death...

Killed by conscious, loyalty to a man who called her

a Polish Whore...

a man who was dangerous, diabolical when on the demonic entity of cocaine...


which drove him closer to being insane...

Saviour To Sophie--

Yet also her killer

Two bodies found seemingly asleep on a bed drowned by sunlight--
The goddess of peace touching both their brows...

Cyanide:
Nathan's apparent salve...the medium--

Surrounded by the words of a woman who had to stay in seclusion...

Imprisoned by the illness of anxiety

The Words A Literary Backdrop

To The Devices of a sick man,
Who twisted in his fantasies thought that Sophie
Was Unfaithful but wasn't until the relationship
Seemed to be Over...

A farm in South Virginia, a life that could have been serene,
Filled with love, happy and content: children, husband,
Home

But Sophie chose death because of the spirit, GUILT
Which Sucked The Blood Out Of Her Veins Making Her
Even More Pale, And Sullen;

And ended up only being Stingo's lovely vision blinded
by white light--the only features remaining were her
blue-green eyes, and an expression
That Her Soul Was Still Imprisoned In Auschwitz









Poetry by Alison Clarke
Read 591 times
Written on 2006-08-27 at 18:44

Tags Guilt  Sophie  Holocaust 

dott Save as a bookmark (requires login)
dott Write a comment (requires login)
dott Send as email (requires login)
dott Print text