Listening to Jazz in Newport Beach

(Remembering the Holocaust)

All the beautiful clothes

In a pile on the floor

Some beginning to wear

A thread loose, color fading

A piece of hair

Of living human beings

They watch and listen to the jazz

Look closer

Prettiness gone, fading too

Eyeglasses, teeth, possessions

Become just cracks in the sidewalk

Another time, suitcases piled high, near the tracks

No one young, one newly born

No one too small

Rusty, dusty, orange and wrinkled

This way.

You could see spattered young flesh

New cells still forming

Lost before they began

You would have to see the beginning

At its end.