Malca Natanson

BABI-YAR

A young boy in farmer clothes
harnessed to a muddy wheat cart
a pitchfork on his shoulder

Through a thatch of clouds
a thin man
tries to steal the sun for himself

On an old wooden bench
an old man blows smoke rings on the tip of his lip,
to the sound of a baby girl’s laughter
as if the whole world starts and ends
in her eyes.

And I want to capture them
in my world of shadows
to send them into the open pit that gapes in me
night after night

Instead I smile like pierrot
and continue to crawl on the mountain slope
chained to the hard projections of memory.

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