YALA KORWIN

a poet and visual artist, works hard at reconciling two competing needs: to express herself with words and with images. As a Holocaust survivor she is deeply committed to her mission of not letting the world forget the most horrible crime of the twentieth century. Her book, TO TELL THE STORY - POEMS OF THE HOLOCAUST is distributed by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Her poem “The Little Boy With His Hands Up” and interview is included in A CHILD AT GUNPOINT by Richard Raskin. Her three poems are included in BEYOUND LAMENT edited by M. Striar, and three poems in the new edition  of BLOOD TO REMEMBER edited by Charles Fishman. She has poems published in numerous magazines.

 

Below is a selection of her poems organized around her watercolors of "Dawn" and "Dusk ."

 

DAWN

 

I woke up at dawn

To sun and life

To moon and love

To sweetness

And bitterness

To play and wonder

Pain and loss

And many questions

Without true answers

 

DUSK

 

When dusk came

I lit my candle

To stop the night

And make it vanish

To let me be

To let me stay

A while more

To let me love

A while more

 

*

 

LEARNING TO KNOW

 

to learn the meaning

of the world (but not

getting answers) I stopped

asking questions such as:

what am I here for?

what am I to do?

and started to listen

to a crack on a ceiling

the motion of a hand

a ripple on a pond

the soar of a crow

melting snow

a crimpled skirt

a teapot on a table

a circle, a square

(things common, nothing

novel or especially

interesting) and gather

the meaning of the world

fragment by fragment.

 

                                                    Previously published in Piedmont Literary Review

 

*

 

EVERY NIGHT

 

In the silence

Echoing each shadow

 

I listen

To your heartbeats

 

Every beat

A prelude

 

Every beat

A parting

 

So small the world

Of our lives

 

Growing smaller

And smaller

 

Beat by beat

 

*

 

HOW LUCKY…

 

How lucky those who breathe but do not think!

The oak and spruce, that birch, the elm and plane…

They live their lives not knowing loss or gain,

Do not invent pr strive, don’t look or blink.

How blessed the rose, how blessed the plainest bloom!

They thrive on gifts (The givers: earth and sun.)

They fade with grace; give up what’s just begun.

No cringe, regret, no grief, no fear of doom.

 

But I do need the touch and smell or rain,

My life is lightning, so intense and terse.

Yet I, endowed with matter known as brain,

Am grateful for what seems to be a curse.

Although I suffer, grieve, and twist with pain,

I also love and dream, and pen a verse.

 

                                                                         Previously published in The Hypertexts

 

*

 

GROWING

 

Mom said

She shouldn’t

She is barely nine

 

And I was mad

 

But Dad said

She could

She is already nine

 

And I was scared

 

                                                                            Previously published in Eleven

 

*

 

AS YOU SPOKE

 

                    It is extraordinary how music sends one back

                    into memories of the past – and it is the same

                    with smells.

                                                      George Sand

My nostrils recall

the smell

of freshly mowed grass.

 

I think of long ago:

You stretched out

by my side,

 

like a lover,

yet apart.

Your hand caressed

 

the freshly mowed grass.

I watched your lips

as you spoke.    

                                                              Previously published in Piedmont Literary Review

 

*

 

A LETTER

 

                                  Act I. Buried in the knoll up to her waist…

                                  Act II. Winnie buried up to her neck

                                                    -- Beautiful Days by Samuel Beckett

 

Dear Samuel Beckett:

 

It’s just

To let you know

That my body too

Sinks inch by inch

Into the hole of my grave,

But my head is still

In view.

 

Every morning

I wake up

and say,

oh, what a glorious day,

and hope

that all is well

also with you.

 

*

 

ADDRESS BOOK

 

I do not dare blot out

that name that number

sprawled across the page,

like a gutted building’s

empty façade.

 

I should have memorized

each greeting’s cadence,

each farewell’s timbre,

voice of a life that soared,

then vanished.

 

Longing to hear an echo,

ghost message, I dial,

then quickly hang up,

flee a stranger’s snap:

“wrong number.”

 

                                                                   Previously published in Orphic Lute

 

*

 

I FEEL A SWORD OVER MY HEAD

 

I feel a sword over my head

held by this mute biding his time.

I do not stop, just charge ahead.

I feel a sword over my head.

There’s still so much that’s left unsaid,

be it in prose, be it in rhyme.

I feel a sword over my head,

held by this mute biding his time

 

 

*

 

GIFTS

 

I gave

my eyes

to a blind man

 

what are they

for?

he asked

 

I gave

my tongue

to a mute man

 

what a strange

thing

he said

 

I gave

my heart

to a lover

 

he ate it

wrapping paper

and all