—for Ilona Karmel
and Fanny Howe
This poem is not about Janusz Korczak
who chose to lead his orphans
on their march from a Warsaw ghetto
to the long line of trains headed for Treblinka
rather than be freed like a butterfly
to inhabit the meadows the woods
filled with berries and mushrooms
It is about those butterflies
perched on a tight imaginary line
stretched between awareness of what is
and that longing for what can be
and how we might stir their wings
And how image is kept alive
and who are its keepers
shoes left behind
food they were denied
jewels ripped from their bodies
barracks emptied
beds left unmade
tracks in the snow
and faces
But today it is summer in Poland
so there is no snow
no tracks to follow these orphans
as they march
according to one observer
dressed in meticulously cared for clothes
each carrying a blue knapsack
favorite book or toy
and at the front of the line
Korczak himself followed by one orphan
playing Jewish folk songs
on a small violin perhaps among them
Never say you are treading the last path
And how was this image preserved?
It came to me via Fanny Howe’s review
in Poetry magazine of some old notes
by Ilona Karmel titled, Keepers of the Image
in which she concludes:
Terrified and alone we turn to others
because of the self-centered need for comfort
these are the shabby beginnings of our love
and he who knows how to grant comfort
becomes the guarantor of hope and this is not
self-sacrifice but an inner necessity to preserve
that which is too precious to be destroyed
There is a freedom in that moment
when an unforeseen act of self-abandonment occurs
and one steps outside of one’s self
for the sake of a distant achievement
it is the freedom
of an awakening
butterfly
R. T. Sedgwick