The full series of fourteen poems was written to accompany Arie Galles's monumental charcoal drawings derived from World War II aerial views of the principal Nazi extermination camps -- each with an attendant railroad station -- known even then to have been the sites of holocaust. As Galles worked from documentary photographs to establish some pretense at distance (= objectivity), I decided to objectify by turning again to gematria (traditional Hebrew numerology) as a way to determine the words and phrases that would come into the poems. The counts were made off the Hebrew and/or Yiddish spellings of the camp names, then keyed to the numerical values of words and word combinations in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. It is my hope that this small degree of objective chance will not so much mask feeling or meaning as allow it to emerge.

The First Station: Auschwitz-Birkenau
The Second Station: Babi Yar
The Third Station: Buchenwald
The Fourth Station: Belzec
The Fifth Station: Bergen-Belsen
The Sixth Station: Gross-Rosen
The Seventh Station: Dachau
The Eighth Station: Chelmno
The Ninth Station: Treblinka
The Tenth Station: Mauthausen
The Eleventh Station: Maidanek
The Twelfth Station: Sobibor
The Thirteenth Station: Ravensbruck
The Fourteenth Station: Stutthof

THE FIRST STATION: AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

now the serpent:

I will bring back
their taskmasters
crazy &

will meet them
deep in the valley
& be subdued

separated in life
uncircumcised, needy
shoes stowed away

how naked they come
my fathers
my fathers

angry & trembling,
the serpents
you have destroyed


their faces remembered
small in your eyes,
shut down, soiled

see a light
take shape in the pit,
someone killed

torn in pieces
a terror, a god,
go down deeper



THE SECOND STATION: BABI YAR

he was angry
& smelled
like the righteous

slew
the clean & pure,
ran over them

& they went down
before us
faint

& streaked,
the bars
along the way

increased & multiplied
before our eyes
their place

spread far & wide,
was like my spirit
& my sword

that made you see



THE THIRD STATION: BUCHENWALD


deliver me
from them

your cattle
rising

your assembly
lords of fat

deliver me
from color



THE FOURTH STATION: BELZEC


of those who had escaped,
the children foremost,
he would take some as witnesses

"leave me to drink
"among the goats
"that you may eat & I be eaten

"when life becomes a terror
"your strength against the children
"& her children blotted out



THE FIFTH STATION: BERGEN-BELSEN

1
gates
round about me

I knew
& you know

& she had compassion
(alive)

a carcass
a carcass

& a dancing
carcass



2
& I will kill
the fat
& the fat ones


the wicked
the he-goats
your mistress

conceived
like a coat
& torn off

like the twenty
those you ran over
& numbered

& like those
I will kill



THE SIXTH STATION: GROSS-ROSEN


& naked there among
the swarming things

we saw them
in the dung

bright spots
bright spots

that she did stare at
& would see them burn



THE SEVENTH STATION: DACHAU


heart
dim
& sore

his hands
slow
& heavy

& so he looked,
his glory
weeping



THE EIGHTH STATION: CHELMNO

1
A Chorus of Children:

we dreamed
& he changed:
an armed man
but delicate,
driven,
someone who touches us,
touches
our thighs,
strips us naked,
to wound us,
a fugitive,
evil,
aggrieved,
who punishes,
slays us
at evening


2
A Chorus of Survivors

the word
that you feared
like hail
on the mountain
& feared
what would cause it to shine,
to be seen,
like her belly,
like hooks,
like the wheat
on our altars,
all will be eaten,
will not be
a sacrifice
there with the nations,
but a curse
in her womb



THE NINTH STATION: TREBLINKA


the voices, thunders
& the voices
of our kin
that they will bring in
from the top

the kingdoms gathering
to kill us
& you will wave
o Israel
& will submit yourself

& I will set apart
the sum of them
the thunders, voices
& the thunders
I will watch & will take heed



THE TENTH STATION: MAUTHAUSEN


your camp
brings me
the war
that bore you,

made you inherit
the plague,
your children
torn from you,

your hands that spawned
the offspring of
the nations,
a stone against them

from my hand,
my hand against them
& a plague
between us



THE ELEVENTH STATION: MAIDANEK


1
a thing
spoken
speaks in me

I see
the spoken
thing

a word
hail
pestilence

& from your face
a curse
is poured out

& a bone
is set in motion
spoken

in disgust
to see
the one who speaks it

2
a foreigner,
you say,
the dew like blood

her city
broken
empty for her sake

has blessed you,
seed of them
I will pursue

& you will say
in blood:
leave me alone



THE TWELFTH STATION: SOBIBOR


1

as he had spoken
from the wilderness:
be fruitful!

(& they were fruitful)

so he could blind them
with a fist
& cut them --

& she could take from them
the vision of
his cities




2

a skin
harp
& a boil

according to its words

how blind
& evil
like its skin

your words
erased



THE THIRTEENTH STATION: RAVENSBRUCK

1
in my name she placed
an offering of dust

an offering of graves
where she lay empty

desolate, lay guilty
for her pleasures

in my name, the lamb
approaching

placed the basin
at her neck

throughout your generations


2
For Rachel, twice:

she turned aside,
I thought,
the wood, the thorns
wounding my thighs


& when they came
& carried her away
he gave them numbers
by the sword

a bell
for those with numbers



THE FOURTEENTH STATION: STUTTHOF


the evil water
in my dream

has emptied out
their cities

like my mouth
a hole

& in the blood
they burn

they turn them
into smoke