*Reprinted with permission from Marjorie Agosín, ed., Miriam’s Daughters: Jewish Latin American Women Poets, Santa Fe: Sherman Asher Publishing, 2001.
In a clearing
of the forest
near the precipices
of the crestfallen night
and absences,
there was
a small girl’s
traveling bag.
It could have been
like that of your daughter,
full of charmes,
small and wild
pebbles,
imagined jewels.
It could have been
the bride’s valise
with her mauve clothes
like love
or rain on the soul
after love.
However
it was the bag
of a Jewish girl
who sang at night
and who perhaps lived in Prague,
or Amsterdam,
or a snowy village of Romania.
Her crime was being born Jewish,
nothing more.
Suddenly, her bag is found
between the mist
and blue smoke,
drifting.
It had no destination
nor owner and
only said
“Auschwitz.”
Is Auschwitz a city
for the dead or the living?,
asked the startled girl.
It was a small bag
with the treasures of girls
and their longings of spring.
It was an abandoned bag,
without destination or
owner.
This little valise ended
in a place where
upon their arrival
children’s hair turns white
and they no longer looked at the sky.
It is more than certain
in the age of frost
without borders
some Nazi guard
must have kept the loot:
perhaps a doll
or a diary,
maybe sunflower seeds
but only a memory.
Translated by Laura Nakazawa
