The Butterfly
by Pavel Friedman
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
in the ghetto.
Written in 1942. From I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944, edited by Hana Volavkova.
* * * *
What I've been reading:
Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the NY Times on HBO's Unchained Memories documentary on slavery...
Last night, because of another contrelamontre submission, I watched Moulin Rouge again. And was struck by how much more thoroughly original it seems than Chicago, which seems more likely to win an Oscar. I feel badly about this, which I guess is silly. Have decided that I am rooting for Nicole Kidman because if Gwyneth Paltrow can have an Oscar, god knows she should too. Am still quietly seething that Glenn Close does not have one but that's silly too, isn't it?
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