I wanted to write something to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2018 and as it developed I realised it was a bit like W.H. Auden's famous Night Mail so I thought why not go the whole hog and just use it as the whole basis of the poem. It's taken a while to refine it.
You can read the original
here but it's worth finding the video on YouTube of it being read on the original film as the different sections scan very differently and are worthy of being listened to in the correct rhythm.
Night Train 1943
With thanks, and apologies, to WH Auden.
I
This is the Night Train crossing the border
no hindrance thanks to the Fuhrer's order
Carrying the rich, carrying the poor,
the owner of the shop and the girl next door.
Out of the Alps a steady climb
Under this regime she'll arrive on time
In open trucks the people get colder
Rammed like cattle shoulder to shoulder
Scarce sympathy shown as she passes
the silent stations of the huddled masses
People turn their heads as she approaches
Don't look at the faces in the coaches
No-one wants to change her course
despite occasional silent remorse
At night she passes, where no-one wakes
In the carriage a frightened woman shakes
II
A New Dawn rises, the job near done
Down to the ghetto she descends
Towards the town brimming with the sick and dying
Towards the state apparatus, the furnaces
hidden in forests like ancient monsters
The Reaper waits for her.
In far away countries, exalted lands of the free
Families long for news.
III
Letters of hope, pleas for help
words without joy from girl and boy
Filled-out forms, formal invitations,
To live with more fortunate relations
Applications for situations
arising in remote but safer nations.
Letters arrive then suddenly stop
Why would they not write? Why would they drop
the letters from uncles, cousins and aunts
trying to get to Belgium or France
then on to Chicago, Miami, New York
News from Europe increasingly dark
Letters of love, of hope, then fear
from Vienna stained by desperate tear
Written on paper of every hue
by the victimised, robbed and hounded Jew
who cannot bypass the black pen's scoring
as the cold official censors their heart's outpouring
The arm of the fascist state is long
the deafening silence feels so wrong
IV
On the train there's fitful sleep
And dreams of real life monsters
suddenly alive; no friendly waves from neighbours
who sleep safe, for now, in much quieter streets
In ethnically cleansed Munich, Cologne and Berlin
a few remain, continue to dream
and shall wake soon, ten to a room
and none shall hear the fateful knock
without a quickening of the heart
For who can bear to feel themselves forgotten?
Tim Fellows 2018
