My mother and grandmother were imprisoned in a camp during the 2nd world war not far from the swiss border, it wasn't a death camp, yet many died.


A Little Girl

And so I have a story of a little girl
in a paper dress of freedom colours.
The protagonists, both are gone
but the story lives on in a family album
One where the pictures are words not images.

I have another story, of the same little girl
wheeling a piglet in her dollies pram,
while the soldiers searched the house
she wheeled and cooed to her pink baby.

I have a story of a little girl on a train
travelling to a camp not far from the swiss alps,
a little girl in her winter clothes, that grew to small
as she grew too thin, and lessons
were learnt in draughty huts and treats were few.

I have a story of a little girl, who cried
when she saw her first banana, who shied away
from a soldier who offered her chocolate,
who was scared of the eagle on the landing

these are the stories that have been passed
down, played often, yet perhaps not often enough.
I only knew them second hand

I have a story of a little girl in a paper dress,
made with sore fingers, tired souls to celebrate
that somewhere in the merciful
that they, would be the ones to return home.



Poetry by Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 798 times
Written on 2015-05-08 at 20:48

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
This is an unusual poem for you. Yours usually wander back and forth between the present and the past. This one is very carefully structured and speaks only of the past. Like the others, it's a good poem.
2015-05-11


Jamsbo Rockda The PoetBay support member heart!
This piece is very moving. The snippets of memory all link together very nicely. The mention of a little girl playing and ignoring soldiers at first and then being terrified by them later tells the reader of the horrors that must have been involved. A deeply emotional and fractured work.
2015-05-10


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
The horrors of the war are never repeated or detailed enough to frighten the politicians out of planning yet another. We need poems like this one as beacons to shine light again and again on these horrors.maybe I've day some with enough sense and power will listen!
2015-05-08



Beautiful and heartwrenching.
Some lives have known such horror and yet your story is so tender and I for one love the little girl:)
2015-05-08