|
|
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM SHOES
The leather, the wooden buttons,
the fasteners, the clasps;
one shoe on top of the other.
Tooled and tanned mounds.
Worked, worn, tattered, dirty,
dry.
Still.
Overlooking,
from this cliff of fifty years
to the shore of these shoes,
gangplank shoes,
is to attend an endless vigil;
yet it is to taste the end;
to smell it and wait.
These shoes.
Off-black off-brown off-gray off-white,
off.
Scarce buttons, frayed straps,
heels elsewhere,
soles gashed and cleft.
The shoes.
Dim, idle, drained.
A display.
This shrine marched in snow,
mud, woods, water, ice;
through shouts and screeches and spit.
This shrine trudged beneath God's averted face.
- Frances LeMoine