(for Elissa R. Henken)
The withered leaf of a holly tree delineates your life – the prickles of circumstances remain but the flesh has decayed to a gossamer of poems, a fine beauty, curves which toss and turn languages; the folio lands and stabilizes, lines weave through each other with rhyme and rhythm, alliteration and assonance aligning the safety net of memory – it is tension which creates the web and the folds become cradles of the muse; it is the barbed strength of the structure which ensures endurance in transforming the raw flesh of the crow’s song into the aria of the nightingale.
The barbs became the crown of the Jewish girl whose descent from a wooden bed in a labour camp became a pietà.
We discover old gold in the soil.
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2024
Arnold Daghani (1909-85) gave the title ‘Pieta’ to his picture of Selma’s body wrapped in a blanket being lowered on a ladder from the top row of bunk beds in Mikhailowka labour camp; he was a Jew who recorded in pictures and words the life of the camp and one of the few who succeeded in escaping from it.