' ' ' ' ' ' Shachor Shachar(Black Dawn) - Tankas Poem by Dónall Dempsey

ULLASTRATH
(THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY)

Here upon the Boyne’s
battlefield...a butterfly
moves through history
fluttering from death to death
as from flower to flower.

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In the corner of
this foreign field the dead –
go on dying their undying death
a breath of air snaps
flags to attention crosses to the horizon.


*******

WHAT HAS HAPPENED

The train & the heat
all the noise the confusion
the people’s faces
what can’t be grasped here:
now –the train...stops at Auschwitz.

*******

SHACHOR SHACHAR
(BLACK DAWN)

Officers request
the old nostalgic tunes
that bring to mind stars
over Germany yellow stars.

Orchestra plays Death’s Tango.


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* 'Heimat, deine sterne'(“Stars Of My Homeland”) popular during and after the Reich. SS officers requested it of the Auschwitz orchestra.
The sentimental and the savage bound surreally together.

** The infamous 'TODESTANGO'
(an actual recording exists!) was based non the pre-war tango hit by the Argentinean Eduardo Bianco who as it happened entertained Mr. Hitler and Mr. Goebbels in 1939.

At Janowska camp near Lvov it took on its cruel grotesque meaning.