field notes from pilgrimage
Elsa Asher
I ate a cinnamon roll in Berea
in a colonial undertow of sugar
massacred ancestors
white ghosts
thick damp air
yarn and brooms and clay pots
it almost hurts too much to touch the earth
the soil like a lost love
a single malt essence of grief.
On the way to Germany
the veil between time
and memory got thin
every moment opening up
into a remembering
tumbling out terribly
the plane cabin became a chamber
the air smelled like gas
when we landed I was careful
to not lose sight of my friend
to not get separated
on the streets of Berlin
the small gold plaques everywhere
embedded in the cobblestones
inscribed with a name
a date of birth and the date they were caught
deported, sent to die
someone had laid flowers as offerings
the trees on the side of the road
are the ones I dreamt of all my life
running as I’m being chased
the trees remember what happened
if I am frozen in my experience
of being hunted
it is simple relational geometry
that another is frozen in their experience
of hunting
in this way we abide
in relationship
staring across at each other
bound in the gaze
an unbearable embrace
an intimacy of suffering
cast in camber
our liberation
bound up together.
Sitting on a riverbank in Breslau
the Oder river sang a song to me
I listened and sang it back.
We arrived at the front gate of Belzec*
just as it was closing for the night
when I saw the gate sliding shut I ran to it
thinking I would squeeze through at the last moment
not thinking what would happen after
locked inside, my friends on the other side of the fence
why was this my impulse, to run towards
the closing gate of an extermination camp
we walked down the dusty road
through the brambles and tall grass.
we stood, pressed up against the steel fence, looking in
names of towns, rocks strewn across the hill
representing all the people murdered there
we said Kaddish and sang and introduced ourselves
a guard came out of one of the buildings and looked at us
we walked quickly back to the car
we offered wine to the earth
the long suture line across my chest pulsed
all our scars hurt.
The Bug River flows through Galicia towards the Baltic
currently it is the border between Poland and Ukraine
we tried to cross the border in our rental car
but were turned back, Ukraine is out of the EU
so we drove to the river
stood on the soft bank
I took off my shirt and pants
and swam across
climbing up on the other side
I prayed and said hello
to my ancestors
whose bodies are the land
I gathered a shell for my father
and with clay in my hands
I swam back.
*Belzec is an extermination camp in eastern Poland where a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and
1943.
