Women's Poems of Struggle and Hope in the Black History Month

On  Thursday, February 27, 2014, clients and staff at the adult residential and outpatient treatment programs  of Phoenix House Venice celebrated the Black History Month in style. They gathered with their guests to commemorate the achievements and history of African Americans with soul food, poetry jam and music. This Second Annual African-American History Celebration and Poetry Jam was coordinated by Phoenix House's Counselor La Tonya Smith, who ensured the participation of both clients and staff in an inspired and inspirational meeting of minds and hearts. 

Katerina Canyon

As the "guest poet" for the evening, I read three poems.  First, I presented my favorite work by another former Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, Katerina Canyon, entitled "Feet" and dedicated to the poet's mother. It is one of the most popular poems by Katerina, who was the first and only African American Poet Laureate in our foothill community before moving to Atlanta, Georgia. She enriched the poetry scene in California with many readings and community projects.  

Feet

I cleaned my daughter’s feet.
I swept the warm cloth along
her soft, Earth toned skin — she grinned
and said, “Mom, that feels Heavenly.”

Yes, I remember.

Lying on the bed like a doll filled with sand
too fatigued to move — I played hard that day.
Slightly waking to feel the warm cloth on my feet.
Mother washing the day’s dirt away.

Yes, that felt Heavenly.

My friends told me their mothers would say
we should always take care
to wear clean underwear

in case we came upon disaster.

“Clean feet are most important”, my mother said.

She explained that a woman’s feet
told the story of her life.
That on her soles you could see
the roads she traveled.

She would say, “You can measure her resilience in a woman’s ankles”

I was told that if I were to get into an accident,
dressed like a bum,
and the doctors saw I had clean feet,
they would take good care of me.

“I know that may sound silly to you”, she’d say

She explained they would know that I tried
my best to take care of myself
and that my dress was more
a matter of circumstance than of desire.

When I was too tired for an evening bath, she washed my feet.
When I was sick in bed, she washed my feet.
When we were homeless, she washed my feet.
When she felt there was nothing else to do, she washed my feet.

Yes, it felt Heavenly.

I tried out for the high school track team.
I went in for a physical.
The doctor examined my feet
and said, “Nice feet,” and approved me as healthy.

He never asked me if I had on clean underwear.

I wondered how many kids
would miss out on running track
because their feet weren’t as clean as mine?

And I thought she was being silly.

She was right.

I finally saw her.
And there she was.
Too tired to move.
Dying.

I filled the bowl with warm water.
I found a soft cloth.
Picked up the soap. Ivory pure.
The only type she would use.

I looked at her feet — so long and thin.
Dark as Louisiana clay.
Her veins stuck up like river lines.
A road map to the Bayou.

I washed her feet.
Her feet carried heavy burdens.
She walked many miles for many years.

She said, “That feels Heavenly.”

I replied, “Yes, I remember.”

— Katerina Canyon

I then read two of my own poems, "Memory Mirrors" (a reflection on survival skills of oppressed people) and "The Veil, the Weave" (a spiritual call to action). Both poems involved audience participation - the listeners recited a refrain in the first poem, and were engaged in a dialogue of two groups answering back and forth in the second poem.  One of the participant later commented: "I did not know that poetry could be done like that. It was very exciting!" In the poem below, the audience recited the refrains.

Digital Integration by Susan Dobay, 2013

Memory Mirrors
            ~ after Reminiscence by Susan Dobay

by Maja Trochimczyk

The ancestors’ weight heavy on their shoulders

The ages’ wisdom embroidered on their skin

Bend down, bend down

You will not be broken

Tall stems of rice bow low before the wind

Slide through the onslaught, a sudden surge of war

Young mothers whisper silence to their daughters

Girls watch, repeat the gestures of their kin

Bend down, bend down

You will not be broken

You have to learn the art of disappearing

Invisible, you will outlive the strangest times

Be still, be patient, breathe the longest hours

You have to do it all and remain unseen

Bend down, bend down

You will not be broken

They came and took our men who were the strongest

They came and killed our boys who were so brave

Women alone remained in our village

Into the river our silver tears have flown

Bend down, bend down

You will not be broken

Bend down, bend down

You will not…

Grass by Maja Trochimczyk, (c) 2013.

The second poem, "The Veil, the Weave", is inspired by a line from Isaiah, about the great evil of lies and death that will be destroyed at the end. The poem's four color voices are to be read by different people, if there are not enough people, the regular and italic fonts indicate two different voices to be woven. in the tapestry of the poem, the lines written in capital font are to be read by everyone all at once.

The Veil, the Weave

“On this mountain, God will destroy the veil that veils all peoples,

the web that is woven over all nations: he will destroy Death forever.”               

                                                  Isaiah, Chapter 25, Verses 7-8

the veil  that veils    the weave  that is woven

                  

break them          tear them       shred them       set us free

the veil that obscures  
                     distorts true meaning  
                                                  disorients 
                                                                 and stifles

            

obfuscation     dilapidation     obliteration     abomination

the weave of sticky thread

is a trap to capture the unwary

                  the weave of shiny thread

                  is a snare to entangle the greedy

                                 the weave of sweet-scented thread

                                 is a seduction of beauty into nothing

                                                                 the weave is woven

                                                                where is the weaver?

 where is he hiding?

                  this maker of imitations

                                   the master of mimicry

                                                       the creator of absence

 the weave holds us tight

              in the habit of hours

                                    in the rut of the known

                                                   in the suffocating thickness 

of lies             
                      that are woven           
                                                       that are told!

break the veil   undo the knots   free the mind

to see the blessings of infinity

                              to hear the music

                                        of sing-song lullabies

                                                         calming us for the night

for the first gleam 

                             of stardust

                                               for awakening                                

                                                                          in grace

   when the veil     AND the weave      are gone

__________________________________________________

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk 

Poet Katerina Canyon

Phoenix House's Counselor, La Tonya Smith, set the tone for further presentations by reading the famous poem by Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise." With is powerful refrain, it is a hymn to the perserverence in the face of adversity:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.  (....)

Out of the huts of history's shame  
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain 
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear 
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear 
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise  
I rise
I rise. 

The most moving and touching segment of the celebration was created by the participants themselves. Men enrolled in residential treatment programs volunteered to prepare speeches, or essays about various historical figures, from well known like Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to those who should be known better, like Ralph Bunche.  The story about Bunche was particularly memorable and humorous, with its refrain: "Do you know who was Ralph J. Bunche?"  For those who do not know, he was an American diplomat and negotiator of a peace accord in Palestine that won him the Nobel Peace Prize of 1950. Many listeners went  home repeating this refrain..."Do you know who was Ralph J. Bunche?"

The audience had scoring cards and evaluated the quality of each presentation, that included, in addition to speeches, also an artwork - a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The five best presenters won prized - gift cards and books, including sample issues of the Rattle Poetry Magazine coupled with a book by two local poets, Marlene Hitt and Dorothy Skiles, entitled Riddles in the Rain (donated by the authors). 

_______________________________

"Memory Mirrors" by Maja Trochimczyk, first published in Kathabela Wilson, ed., Susan Dobay's Impressions of China, Poets on Site Chapbook inspired by artwork of Susan Dobay, Pasadena, 2013.  

"The Veil, the Wave," by Maja Trochimczyk, first published in The Voice of the Village, vol. 3 no. 3, April 2012.

"Feet" by Katerina Canyon, reprinted from www.villagepoets.com/katerina.html, also published www.poetickat.com/kcanyonfeet.html‎.

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, the Royal Castle, and the Monuments Men

The Royal Castle in Warsaw in 2013.

There is a new feature film, fact-based and shocking, about the destruction, looting, and recovery of artworks by the Nazis. George Clooney's "The Monuments Men" is a work of fiction, but "The Rape of Europa" - a 2006 documentary that first brought these issues to the world's attention, is not.  I found its depiction of the whole scale purposeful robbery and vandalism conducted by Germans in the whole Europe to be fascinating, with lots of unknown footage and mind-boggling examples. The four countries that are at the heart of the story were treated differently by the race-obsessed Germans: the artwork of the inferior, "slave" Slavic races of Poles and Russians could, or should, be destroyed, the artwork of Italy and French just stolen. Modern art was destined for destruction everywhere, but "classics" had a chance - especially if they could be integrated into the mythology of the "Aryan" race.

Ruins of Warsaw's Royal Castle in 1945.

Apparently, the mass murderers from the NSDAP and SS were ardent admirers of high quality antiques and masterpieces of Western art. So much so, that they took and hid these pieces for their own "consumption" and for placement in their own "museums." A lot of that art was looted from Jewish owners, targeted and systematically stolen, while the owners were murdered. Some paintings and sculptures were taken from state museums, some from palaces of aristocrats and kings, some from art galleries. Nothing was sacred.

The Castle Square (Plac Zamkowy) in the Old Town of Warsaw.

Poland, the first target of Hitler, the nation destined for physical extermination and cultural annihilation, suffered some of the most grievous losses of WWII.  It never surrendered, did not form a "colaborator" government that worked with the Nazis, like the Vichy in France. The Holocaust of Jewish Poles and Polish Jews is a crime without parallel. But the suffering of Poles was immense, too. Poland lost 3 millions of its Jewish citizens and 3 million of its Polish inhabitants. The destruction of Polish culture was a particularly significant goal for the Nazis, along with the killing of the cultural and national elites - officers, professors, artists, the clergy. Anyone with a brain and a position of power could become a target. Members of my mothers' family were on the list: two priests, Karol and Feliks Wajszczuk, ended up in Dachau, one survived, one was killed - for supporting the underground resistance.

In 1944, the Royal Castle and the whole city of Warsaw were systematically destroyed, holes drilled into walls, stuffed with dynamite, and exploded; fire-throwers used to set the interiors and libraries aflame. Poles rebuilt what they could after the war, recovered  some artwork, not all - it was returned by American Monuments Men, by the Soviet government. But many important pieces disappeared without a trace. The destroyed buildings were reconstructed, the originals irreparably lost.  I used to go to music school in the Old Town, Music High School named after Jozef Elsner, the teacher of Chopin. The school was on Miodowa street and the best way was to take the tramway no. 26 and go through the W-Z Tunnel, under the old town. When I was coming back from my lessons I looked up into the empty window hole in the last wall of the palace, pointing towards heaven, lonely, damaged, forlorn.  I still remember its angular shape next to the full  moon, above the rooftops of the old town. I was happy to see it rebuilt; it took many years. But the palace looked too new for me, and still does. It is a simulacrum, a model, not the real thing.

_________________________

In 1944, a beautiful song was written by a Polish-Jewish popular music composer, Albert Harris, a farewell to the dying city. He composed it in Italy, at Monte Cassino, as a member of the Polish army that was fighting at the Nazi stronghold. Harris joined the General Anders' Army that was formed from Polish refugees, and prisoners in the Soviet Union, then joined the British army in liberating Italy. After the war, the soldiers were scattered around the world. Britain did not want them, they went to Canada, Australia, the U.S.. Harris ended up in America. His Warsaw song became so popular after 1945, that it was even translated into Danish and became one of Denmark's greatest hits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEwIkP6H3es = Albert Harris, Song about My Warsaw (Piosenka o Mojej Warszawie), in Polish, recorded by W. Sypniewski in 1945, illustrated with pictures of Warsaw in 1939 and after its liberation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGH-Ffbvubg = Albert Harris, Piosenka o Mojej Warszawie in Danish, recorded in 1946.

______________________________

The famous portrait by Leonardo of the Lady with an Ermine was one of the most notable recoveries of the Monuments Men. An image of the mistress of Italian Duke Sforza, painted in 1490, the portrait belonged to the Czartoryski family of aristocracy and kept in their private museum in Krakow, Poland. After being stolen and hidden, it returned to Poland, thanks to its discovery by the Monuments Men of General Eisenhower - art historians sent along with troops to organize the recovery and restoration of stolen or damaged artwork. They found the Lady in a hunting lodge of Nazi ruler of Poland, General Governor Hans Frank. It was then returned to Poland to the museum of its original owners, the Czartoryski family, and then "nationalized" - now it is found at the other Royal Castle of Poland, Krakow's ancient Wawel Castle (the kings moved to Warsaw in the 17th century, and Wawel was not destroyed, so its old walls are really old...).

The painting's story is quite convoluted, its beauty - still astounding. I decided to write a poem in praise of its beauty and history. Here it is, a brand new reflection on Leonardo's gift to the world.

The Lady with an Ermine

Leonardo’s brush created a vessel for her to inhabit,

a grey blue sky they painted black much later –

she was pregnant, her son – a Sforza heir, 

her lover – a Duke, a white ermine – his emblem.

In 1830, with her Polish princes, she went

into exile through Dresden to Paris, locked

in a box of precious wood. She came back. 

In 1940, hidden again, she was safe until Nazis 
found her – Governor Hans Frank fell in love,
in a palace he had stolen in Kraków, 
in a hunting lodge he had built in Bavaria. 
The Red Army was closing in.

She felt a slight discomfort in the crisp winter air

when American soldiers held her up, 

for the cameras of Monuments Men.

Another train ride. The navy darkness of a museum wall.

Under a muted spotlight, schoolchildren play a game:

Walk briskly from right to left, don’t let your eyes  

leave her eyes, see how she is watching you.

Her eyes follow me around the room

with that secretive smile she shares

with her famous cousin. She sees my delight,

caresses  the smooth, warm ermine fur.

She knows that I know that she knows

© 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk, written on February 11, 2014

This is the first draft of the poem, subsequently revised and posted on this blog in 2015, 

http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2015/09/give-it-all-away-love-and-light-poetry.html

as well as on the Mary Evans Photo Depository, in their poetry blog:  
http://www.maryevans.com/poetryblog.php?post_id=7032

There is a recording of me reading this poem in Paris: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI-LHJYgwbk

If you need to read love poetry on Valentine's Day or its weekend, visit Moonrise Press Blog for sample poems and a series of links to other poetry of love and reflections on Valentine's Day and types of love, and its folly. 

http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2014/02/poetry-of-valentines-love-and-roses.html

Day of Remembrance at the United Nations and in Family History

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops came into the largely empty death and concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Its prisoners were sent on the death march towards Germany. Only few were left behind. The United Nations selected this day to establish the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The more time passes since the war, the more people want to forget or deny that it happened. It is important to remember. All the more so, that people who have seen and heard what happened when it happened are dying out. It is important to record their memories, even if these memories are not exact and fit for official historical record. Even if they are garbled in family stories, passed on from grandmother, to mother, to daughter, transmitted from grandfather, to father, to son.

 Born in Warsaw, Poland, with ancestral roots in Podlasie and Kresy - eastern borderlands of Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, now divided between these three countries - I used to travel to visit the tombs of my grandparents every October, for All Souls Day, Zaduszki. On the way we passed through a small town with a cemetery right by the road. What happened is in my poem.

Zaduszki

The arch of candlelight in the night sky
above the town of Kałuszyn greets them on the way
to the grandparents’ village. Zaduszki.
All Souls’ Day – the annual visit to the cemetery.

They drive towards the yellow halo
above charcoal horizon. Aunt Basia reminds her:
You have to remember. This town was Jewish
and they were all killed. There’s nobody left
to light a candle for them. They don’t even have tombs.
They were all taken, all murdered.
Other people moved into their houses.
Beyond the moss-covered stone wall
of the village cemetery in freshly plowed fields
her grandparents twin tombstones
rest in the reassuring golden shade
of ancient chesnut and oak.

Candles, chrysanthemum, flower wreaths.
They walk in the rustling leaves,
pray, think of the past.
She tries to imagine the empty town,
the unnamed strangers.

Thirty years later, in Montreal, she sees her first Jew,
in a long satin robe, yarmulke, with curly locks of hair.
She smiles, finally relieved of her duty.
They remember.

(C) 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk

This poem is a part of a new book I suddenly started writing, What Children Learn from War with bits and pieces remembered by my parents, my grandparents, my friend's mother. With bits and pieces heard and seen. With lessons what to do and how to behave to survive. I started thinking about it because I had to. Invited to a conference on "The Musical World of Polish Jews, 1920-1960" at the Arizona State University in Tempe, I decided to educate myself on the historical context of the musical lives I was writing about. My study of "Jewish Composers of Polish Music in 1943" evolved into a different paper, seeking to show the extensive presence of Jewish musicians in Polish musical life in the interwar period, and their displacement or destruction afterwards. For the context, I read some books, then decided to see what happened and, thanks to YouTube, was able to watch documentaries. The most striking one was about the trials of German guards caught by Soviets at the extermination camp in Majdanek near Lublin. Their complete lack of remorse, their inability to understand that what they did - kill Jews - was wrong. They turned to their accusers, not comprehending: "But we did not kill you, guys. We had to do what we did. We just killed Jews."

For these men, quickly relieved of their lack of comprehension by the "guilty" verdict and a public execution, the Jews were not human beings. Over 100 death camps guards were convicted and executed in Poland, under Soviet rule, only about 10 in Germany, liberated by American and Allied troops. The purpose of remembering the Jewish victims is obvious: this was an unprecedented crime against humanity, crime against all of us.

I went to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for the first time this year. I was very impressed with the scope and tone of the exhibits. As a Pole, I was also grateful for an extensive and fair portrayal of the suffering of all Polish people: the Slavs, in accordance with their name, given to them back in the times of the Roman Empire - sclave/slave - were to be slave laborers. Their leaders - teachers, priests, university professors, officers - murdered, their schools and colleges closed. Poland was the first country invaded by Hitler that fought the invasion. The first country that never formed a government supportive of the Nazi rule. The country with over 400,000 people involved in the  underground Home Army - armed resistance. The country with the largest number of the Righteous among the Nations in the world.

Some people want to use the term "Holocaust" for other victims. It is and should be limited to the Jews and Gypsies, who were both scheduled for complete annihilation. It is hard to visualize a crime of such monumental proportions, executed in a frenzy, accelerating towards the end of the war: when all was lost and the ring was tightening around Germany, they still have time to kill the Jews. Calling it crazy does not do it. But visiting the Museum is a step towards understanding.

One exhibit struck me - the photographic record of the entire shtetl of Ejszyszki, from 1890 to 1942. All its Jewish inhabitants were killed but the photographs somehow survived and now form the inside of a circular tower that spans several floors. You can look up from the ground floor and see the small photographs way up high, with details disappearing. You can look down from the second floor and see the generations receding into shadows. The exhibit is masterly, as it brings the ordinary lives of ordinary people to our attention. Just like you and me. They went to school, worked, married, had fun, posed for family portraits... This exhibit filled in the blank that I had in my mind about that empty ghost town of Kaluszyn that we drove by each year and I had to remember. I did not know what to remember, just that it was empty after the war. So this is how these people looked like. Us. I went into the Hall of Remembrance, lighted a candle - just one candle - for all the people from Kaluszyn whom I never knew. Never had a chance to know. Germans made sure of that. I also lit a candle for the victims from my mother's family.

Thanks to the efforts of family historians Waldemar Wajszczuk and Barbara Miszta, we know how many people in the extended Polish family Wajszczuk from Podlasie have been incarcerated in Auschwitz, who died there. Who was a prisoner in Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Majdanek. Who died there.  www.wajszczuk.v.pl

My family is not Jewish, yet claims quite a few victims. And freedom fighters. Father Karol Wajszczuk (b. 1887 – d. 1942) was a prisoner of the Lublin Castle since April 1940, he was then moved to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau on December 14, 1940. He died on 28 May 1942 in the Castle Hartheim in a gas chamber built to exterminate the disabled for the Euthanasia program. His father, Piotr, was the brother of Franciszek, the patriarch of the Wajszczuk-Trochimczyk branch. He was a chaplain for a small cell of Polish freedom fighters, an underground group called "Our Eagles" and including the following men: Stefan Kowalczuk, Bazyli Łaźko, Adolf Młynarczuk, Feliks Szafrański, Józef Krawiecki, Tomasz Stańczuk, Jan Dąbrowski and Bolesław Hawryluk killed in Auschwitz; Stanisław Daniluk arrested and murdered by the Gestapo in Radzyń Podlaski; Jan Ciechowski and Jan Saczuk, also murdered by Germans. "Only Jan Kozłowiec, imprisoned in the Lublin castle, was rescued by members of the Warsaw diversion section of AK" - states the memorial site for Father Wajszczuk in his home parish of Drelow.

His cousin, Father Feliks Wajszczuk (b. 1902 – d. 1973) was in Sachenhausen, then in Dachau since 14 December 1940 and was liberated by Americans on 25 May 1945. He spent the rest of his life in a monastery in France, since his damaged health did not allow him to work. All together, seven members of the extended Wajszczuk family were imprisoned by the Nazis at the infamous Lublin Castle. Two died there and one, Józef Wajszczuk, died in Auschwitz where he was sent in April 1942 and died on 20 December 1942. “Known” as “Mały” he was a member of the Polish Underground (Home Army). Three other members of the extended family were killed fighting in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944: Barbara, Wojciech, and Antoni Wajszczuk. They followed in death their father Edmund (Karol’s brother) who was also involved with the Polish underground.

I wrote about them in two poems. Their memories should be carried forward to the younger generations. I did not want to know, did not want to remember. I was "allergic" to all these monuments to the victims, commemorations, the entire month of April spent on national "martyrology"... Too much for a teenager wanting to study music, read books, go to art exibits. Too much for a young "social butterfly" flitting from an art opening to a new music premiere.

Standing Guard

Enough with the cemeteries, martyrs.
Who cares? Not she, forced to stand
at a tombstone for some fifty strangers
in the freezing rain of April.
She shivers in a white shirt, pleated navy skirt,
a school sweater. The longest hour
of her ten young years.

Someone gave her an ugly beret
she would have never picked. A red tie?
Not allowed to move, sit, turn, frown,
or scratch her nose. Not allowed to talk
to the other girl. No smiling either. Eyes fixed
straight ahead, looking at a distant point.
The longest hour. This is how the dead
consume the living. Reverse cannibalism.

Would she have been more willing
had her parents told her?

Two great uncles, priests held at Dachau:
one relieved of his ills in a gas chamber,
one liberated, with his body, spirit broken.
A fighter of the Polish underground killed in Auschwitz.
Two others hanged in the Lublin Castle.
A denounced Home Army soldier
who came back alive from Majdanek and Gross Rosen.
Three siblings went to fight in the Warsaw Uprising,
were buried in ruins in September 1944.
Those who perished in the Soviet Gulag.
That officer shot in Katyń.

The list goes on and on.
Is that what a ten-year-old should learn?

The list of my family's victims includes freedom fighters, members of underground resistance. Not ordinary children, babies, mothers, grandmothers, wheel-chair bound invalids. It is the killing of ALL that is unique to the Holocaust. It is the killing in the name of making a new, better world. This, too, we have to remember.

Read, Dream, Pray - and Do Not Kill in the Happy New Year 2014!

The New Year came too fast for me, as I was buried in a mountain of books I simply had to read in order to stop writing nonsense. You know, the more you know, the more you know... and the better writer you are... I welcomed the New Year in a Venetian mask, barely had time to watch the Rose Parade on TV... and flew on a red-eye to Washington, D.C.

                                          At the New Year's Eve Ball, with appropriately dressed Sylvia,
                                                    she had a lovely peacock-feather fan...

But my reading and writing recently had nothing to do with poetry, actually it has been on one of the least poetic of subjects. As Adorno said, after Auschwitz no poetry... So I read on Hitler's Willing Executioners and Lissa's 1952 essays written at the height of the Stalinist take-over of Polish culture, with Soviet imports of mass songs, ideologically "proper" poems (they had lots of problems with that), and socialist realism permeating all aspects of creativity.  I'm glad I do not have to comply with such external requirements just to stay alive and put food on my table.  My research project into the presence of Jewish composers in Polish musical life continues after two conference presentations and countless revisions of my text. 

What about poetry, then?  How about a call to prayer? An old one, from a Museum, but still vibrant, still resounding with that unheard Tibetan Horn. 

A Call to Prayer

The blue-eyed dragon roars.

The air fills with flames.

Time to drop the mundane

Tools and thoughts. Time

To go inward, stand still.

The call to prayer spreads

Throughout the world,

From blaring loudspeakers,

Brittle rosaries hanging from

The taxi-drivers’ rearview mirrors.

The call is loud, omnipresent,

Loud, unheeded. We are

Too fast for blue-eyed dragons,

For rosary beads carved from

Olive trees at Golgotha.

Too busy. The dragon roars.

                                      © 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk

Is prayer a good thing? It depends what we are praying for. Fervid beseeching for more money, or for a misfortune for an enemy - No, not really. But singing a prayer in an unknown language, chanting the words not knowing what they mean? Would that work? 

Scholars from the cognitive music study field have done a lot to show how important music and singing is to personal well-being. We are simply much more happy if we sing regularly with others; the hormones start working, the serotonin flows where it should. Recent advances in neurobiology and the study of the brain have shown the mechanisms of these actions. But people knew this for centuries. That's why choral singing fills in temples and churches. That's also one reason why the personal electronic listening devices are a major threat to humanity's happiness... with those headphones on, we do not sing.  

Here's a poem about a building built to resonate with and amplify the choral sounds...

     The Cathedral

     waves of song

     bounce off the cobblestones

    spill on the rooftops

    stay still, watch

    shadows fle the bronze

    majesty of bells

   morning brightness

   rises in the rhythm

   of the ocean, caressing

   ancient mounds

   of cooled off lava

   at the edge of the dying world

   inside the rib-cage

   of a cathedral

   we learn to breathe

   in the beached whale

   of a building

   the city’s beating heart

     (c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk, October 19, 2013

Sometimes, when the forces of darkness take over, the "beating heart" becomes a hologram, empty gesture... That certainly was the case with the Churches in the 1930s and 1940s.  Filled with Christians and racial hatred. But sometimes it is still true. The heart beats with love. Two of my mother's uncles, Feliks and Karol Wajszczuk were prisoners in Dachau. Arrested after being denounced by "not a nice person" they were subject to experiments with malaria, brutal beatings, back-breaking labor without clothes, tools, or shoes, and starvation-level food rations. Karol died in 1943, Feliks survived. Did I mention both were Catholic priests and both were involved in the anti-German resistance? 

Let me end this New Year's story with a great poet and an inspired poem... that's close to the topic of my study, and my heart. 

Ice, Eden

There is a Land that’s Lost,

Moon waxes in its Reeds,
and all that’s turned to frost
with us, burns there and sees.

It sees, for it has Eyes,
Earths they are, and bright.
Night, Night, Alkalis.
It sees, this Child of Sight.

It sees, it sees, we see,
I see you, you too see.
Ice will rise again before
This Hour shall cease to be. 

Paul Celan (1920-1970)

Celan committed suicide, he could not live with what he experienced and saw around him, with what he lost. By remembering him and other poets of the Age of Darkness we may bring some light into our own world, filled with new perpetrators and new acts of cruelty and horror. 

How about a new New Year Resolution: I will not kill? I will not kill anyone with hatred, rejection, indifference... As the Dalai Lama says, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”  Cheers to a year filled with pomegranates, a year without grenades (both the love-bringing fruit and the love-destroying weapon are named with the same word in Polish, the explosive "granat").

________________

Photos by Maja Trochimczyk

Wishing You Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2014!

The Styrofoam snowman lookalike Santa 

Sits next to a penguin vase
In fake snow, tinsel

A gilded fruit bowl

“Not fit for food consumption”
Pine branches and cones made of plastic

The Night of GMO Christmas

Stores full of sad, frazzled people 
Buying gifts 
They’ll return next Monday

Lasciate omni speranza?
To be is just to have? 

Still, there's the happy warmth 
Of a baby dozing off 
On Grandpa’s lap

A child’s laughing 
At paper angel’s wings

She crumples in her hands

With pink cheeks, smudged by chocolate
From a large bite of a cookie
She made with her Mom
For Santa

“Merry Christmas” - she smiles
And all is well on Earth
And in Heaven
All is well and will be
Tonight

(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Ella Fitzgerald "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: http://youtu.be/9L5mPfpeXxk

Christmas Eve

By Christina Rosetti

Christmas hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answring music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Polish Christmas Carol (Bog sie rodzi): http://youtu.be/wriBVTJY_cA

The Holy Night

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem;
The dumb kine from their fodder turning them,
Softened their horned faces
To almost human gazes
Toward the newly Born:
The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks
Brought their visionary looks,
As yet in their astonied hearing rung
The strange sweet angel-tonge:
The magi of the East, in sandals worn,
Knelt reverent, sweeping round,
With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground,
The incense, myrrh, and gold
These baby hands were impotent to hold:
So let all earthlies and celestials wait
Upon thy royal state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

Polish Christmas Carol (Lulajze Jezuniu by Mazowsze): http://youtu.be/inoWL5fhZWA

311 (Snow) by Emily Dickinson

It sifts from Leaden Sieves — It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road — It makes an Even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain — Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again — It reaches to the Fence — It wraps it Rail by Rail Till it is lost in Fleeces — It deals Celestial Vail To Stump, and Stack — and Stem — A Summer’s empty Room — Acres of Joints, where Harvests were, Recordless, but for them — It Ruffles Wrists of Posts As Ankles of a Queen — Then stills its Artisans — like Ghosts — Denying they have been — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKG5iJb2kSY  - Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas Song _____________________________ Photos of snowflakes by Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) from Wikipedia under standard terms. Photos of Holly and Poinsettia leaves by Maja Trochimczyk