(On seeing Ossip Zadkine’s “Mei 1940 – Verwoeste Stad”*)
Flute. Drumtaps in the distance
This tortured scream
mouth opened to oblivion
Like the crater by a blind bomb
Hands outstretched towards an in-
Different sky
Muted supplications
Beyond words
A body holed
Cleanly through
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By cold fire
Scream without sound
Bosom without heart;
Trees in this wilderness have lost
All mind of the foliage that was
Squat amputations are off-
Springs now
Of once adventurous branches
Beyond words
Once albatross, now phoenix
Winged by a thousand windmills
Memory
Parable
Beyond words
June 1991
A sculpture in Rotterdam, Netherlands, im memory of the savage devastations of the Second World War