So Unreal

The train came, as I expected, on time.We were travelling from Erfurt to WeimarTo visit the remains of Buchenwald.The summer before I had walked the streetsOf Pompeii, trying to imagine what lifeWas like for the Romans who had their funIn a world where murals in the culinaAdvertised a hot, sexual free-for-all.But it was death, born of agony and pain,Which thrilled the ecstatic, cheering crowd.

There were two of us that day visitingThe camp where a friend of ours had spentA year learning that in his new world,Only might, whatever your claim, was right.‘When you went to the toilet block,’ ManfredSaid: ‘You never knew whether or notYou’d make it. You might just be shot.’He had died in England, long after his stayIn that less than charming German camp.But the stench of the place had pierced his skin.

The present now is bland at Buchenwald.Barbed wire surrounds a vast space once filledWith a people who owned nothing but fear.And then, we fell down the rabbit hole intoThe Punishment Block – where a word meantWhat the masters said it meant –Innocence banished into an exile called the past.John and I stood in silence in that BlockWhere prayers were drowned by the soundOf curses more cruel than the most savage sea.

What comfort in the thought that vile was German –But the foes of Rome thought vile was purely Roman.