Those who have suffered understand suffering
and thereby extend their hand.
-Patti Smith, singer

The holiday candle figures  
chase one another, trembling 
to stay alive. We sit around 
the table celebrating miracles. 

In the wartime Warsaw Ghetto,*
you sketch the misery—
Hanukkah, 1941, means 
children at street corners
hunched over as tiny elders; 
authorities grunting 
over bodies to deport,
not criminals, just Jews.
And the price of bread rises, 
the power, cut. 

In secret diaries, you scream out 
how your people are half-naked, 
starved, diseased, dying, dead. 
How you used to be human
swotting down schnapps in smoky rooms
with Gorky, Louis Armstrong, 
and friends hollering all around. 

You are human, you are rags 
wrapped around volcanoes
of crowds charging streets 
of briefly unlocked sunlight.  
Spectator, victim: you rage
to undo the scene, the times. 
But the film is wound, 
the feathers sail in deaf air; 
no turning back.  

Here, now, the candles have gone out, 
back to our table, to the afterimages 
that cast spells on future generations. 
Through woody pages and perpetual flickers, 
you lead her to us—

the black coat, the tiny feet,  
just out of your bones for a second, 
no purse, no key—
she toddles off . . . 
street blocked, the bird cannot fly,
never returns.