It's next to impossible to rid my mind of haunting Holocaust imagery. The fact that these images opened the gate to creative writing is a mixed blessing. There is this compulsion to pull from the library shelves anything that has to do with that tragic time in history. I have gone on to write poetry with more light-hearted themes, but in order to depart from that painful topic I found I needed a coda - an ending, a final note.

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After serving several years as a volunteer at the Red Cross Holocaust Tracing Center in Baltimore, I found my emotional in-box full to bursting. Either I had to give up my efforts or find an outlet for the horrific imagery indelibly imprinted on me from those soul-rending cases. And so I took pen in hand. Actually, it is the computer that has fostered any artistic expression I may have, since this wonderful enabler allows my creative voice, such as it is, to be heard. Without the computer to unscramble my thoughts and decipher my scribble, I would have remained mute.

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The result was several Holocaust themed poems circulated among my colleagues at the Center. “You should send them to Elie Wiesel,” they said. In the innocence of a first time writer who has yet to fear baring his soul in public, I did so. He wrote back telling me, "I was touched to read your words - I am not a poet, but I think your words are moving and will do much to make sure that those who were lost will not be forgotten..." Can you imagine, Elie Wiesel infers I am a poet?

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I wrote the following poem in an effort to find an answer to an unanswerable question.

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I BELIEVE

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Where was He when evil swept

Through villages where innocents slept,

Faithful to commandments kept,

Did David's shield protect them?

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Gott mit uns in another tongue

Damn them all, the old, the young

It's from the Jews our ills have sprung

Death for them is in ordnung.

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Useless were their tears to quench

The fire, as was their blood to drench

The Almighty's sacrificial bench.

The search for His existence in vain.

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If we are made in His image,

If mercy triumphs over rage,

If all is written on one's own page,

Was infinite wisdom forsaken?

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The millions marched to certain death,

Shouting His name with final breath,

Their ashes greening mother earth...

Where was G-d? Why omit the "o"?

                  Ani ma'amin,

                              And yet I omit the "o."

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The oft repeated remark, "anyone is a poet who thinks he's a poet," still gives me pause, as does finding my name among the others listed as poets in an anthology. I'd like to think I deserve the appellation as well, but I am still startled when a jumble of thoughts rattle around my brain in the early hours of the morning, then appears as if by magic on the clean white page later in the day in some semblance of order and meaning.

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Thank you for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Jerome Shapiro, Guest Blogger

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Jerome Shapiro writes from Naples, Florida and Baltimore. Another of his Holocaust-themed poems appears in the current issue of Poetica Magazine's Mizmor L'David Anthology,The Shoah - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor.