*****

Recorded Reading (4:52): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pdsxkk2nua2xnu4gq7696/Bedbugs-and-Nazis.mp3?rlkey=desloq0xnwmo7r4u7zrtbdyg0&st=wwb428oj&dl=0

*****

Bedbugs and Nazis

Among the great disasters of our age
Perpetrated one another on
No grimmer, more representative page
Atrocities of man heap man upon

Than that we call “The Holocaust,” though more
Such ‘cleansings’ in this world are carried out
The unobserving people keep no score
Of that which they have never heard about

But like all other situations of
Its ilk, produced its isolated tales
Speak to us the ascendency of love
O’er which no threat successfully prevails

One such told by two Jewish sisters, who
By accident allowed together stay
Additionally somehow managed to
A bottle of medicine stash away

Bringing it assigned barracks then within
And hiding it beneath a mattress there
As their new life in fear and want begin
Accustoming their hearts to endless care

There was a moment when one sister broke
Right down and sobbed her tender sibling to
On the first morning ’twas, when she awoke
With itches wild, despairingly to view

A plague of bedbugs covering her skin
Of all the hardships they were made to face
This was the one which fairly did her in
She wept her sister to, “I hate this place!

“Surely we must by God abandoned be
It’s this above all else I deeply fear
Why does He no longer look down on me
But look some otherwhere and leave me here?”

Her sibling, made of some stern stuff
Enabled her e’en that moment be strong
Though tears stood in her eyes, and voice was rough
She said, “My bosom sister, you are wrong

“There is a reason for each sacrifice
Which hath been made since ever time began
I want you now to take my good advice
Get on your knees beside me, hold my hand

“For you and I are going to thank the Deity
For bringing us to this despairing stew
As well as for every bedbug here be
Now go ahead — I’ll pray along with you”

Persuaded by her sister brave and bold
Our storyteller bowed her trembling head
Preparing to do as she had been told
They knelt together by that filthy bed

After which life went on for years the same
With addition of every passing week
Their little jar of medicine became
Something of which those women more would speak

It seemed to cure just about every ill
To which they gave out one judicious drop
So careful none to accident’ly spill
And sooth to say, it did not seem to stop

From that small bottle to keep coming forth
None asking unless true suffering in
Each treating it as much gold it be worth
Treasuring it feminine circle in

Until one morning just some hours before
With boxes full of medicine men would
Have fought to stand the gate of camp before
And free them to a life suddenly good

Found of it not a single drop inside
Although they turned that bottle on its end
Their fount of medicine completely dried
When they had just come to the very end

Of the great need which had before been theirs
Causing all in that barracks wonder on
This miracle midst their mundane affairs
Heaven’s sweet grace meditating upon

The sisters pondered yet another such:
Why had the guards, whom thoroughness prefer
Never investigated overmuch
The pad ‘neath which they did that jar inter?

The answer came more long years later, when
The sisters went to meet some others who
Had also known a camp confinement then
Sharing dark mem’ries foreign others to

One woman that they met from the same place,
But from a diff’rent barrack, let them know
Guards went into their own but to save face
As soon as possible again to go

Anywhere else they might possibly find
Any excuse at that moment to be
Searching so hastily they might be blind:
“It was the awful bedbugs there, you see.”

*****

This poet/editor is physically disabled, and lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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