Hunger Camp at Jaslo is a poem about the millions of people who died in concentration camps in Poland. The particular camp Symborska describes is deceptively peaceful and could beguile people into thinking it is an innocent and truly beautiful area. She tells the story of the individuals who suffered, starved, and cried there.
I love this poem because Symborska is intrepid when recounting the pain countless people felt, some of whom she probably knew. She is and adept raconteur with the eerie ability to capture my attention as she spins tales of agony and sorrow. She rightfully points out that history has a way of overlooking individuals that died by rounding the death toll to the nearest “clean” number. She shows what importance each life has and what an atrocity it is to smother such a beautiful thing. Symborska uncannily depicts the unified anguish of the people that died.
Hunger Camp At Jaslo
By Wislawa Symborska
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don't know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."
I love this poem because Symborska is intrepid when recounting the pain countless people felt, some of whom she probably knew. She is and adept raconteur with the eerie ability to capture my attention as she spins tales of agony and sorrow. She rightfully points out that history has a way of overlooking individuals that died by rounding the death toll to the nearest “clean” number. She shows what importance each life has and what an atrocity it is to smother such a beautiful thing. Symborska uncannily depicts the unified anguish of the people that died.
Hunger Camp At Jaslo
By Wislawa Symborska
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don't know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."
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