A different take on 'Night Mail'

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