Quaint from a Distance

From an arial distance, where angels look like three monkeys, blind, deaf, and dumb

the roofs appear quaint, 
in this civilized view.
Distressed red-wooden steps;
( oh the things we auction off
when we tear down the barn )
a ladder for God
to get the hell away
from our hellish harvesting.

He was evicted,

from these garrisons,
from the pastoral settings
where blood-brick cottages
were tattoed with numbers;

Five for the Rom -
"Ring around the rosy"
Ten for the children
Mengele had a pocket
full of cyanide posies -
Twenty for those dirty Jews - 

" and we all fell down "

even God...

Smokehouses smoked
with a Bavarian-air,
aside of the little village.
Because proper German wives
couldn't be disturbed,
with the cattle being taken
from the cars to be slaughtered;

content in their flower-boxed homes
on the better side of the street.

Those days were a Shoah

storming down on afternoons,
looking like meloncholy brochures,
as dingy men,
flicked the thought
of humanity from their shoulders.

And the Kaddish snowed
its grey slate flakes.

"Just factory dust coming out of their stoves",

we told ourselves,

cozy, content,
sleeping safe those nights

in OUR own pass-over.