(Berlin- May 10th, 1933)

“Where they burn books, they will,
in the end, burn human beings too.” –Henrich Heine, 1822

They are an army on the march,
the students of Berlin, reverberated
footfalls fill the night that their torches flicker
into light before them, darkness opens
like a passage door—
folds closed again in their wake
leaving the streets blank with murk.

Their songs and cheers engulf the city
from the Opernplatz. They heft
armfuls and oxen carts stuffed with books;
pages rustle as they rattle past,
like witches on the way to the pyre. The fire moils,
flaps with the sound of a flag in wind,
throws odors of burnt-out houses into the air.

We watch from our windows above as they toss books
dried as sun cooked corpses into the flames
and bark out songs of victory while we pray,
clutching David’s star around our necks.
The stench of charred book flesh drifting
across the façade of Berlin
were words that Brecht, Kerr and Heine once penned
ascending to the heavens as embers.

©Shawn Nacona Stroud

♦This poem was chosen as an honorable mention winner for the 22nd Annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience