The Holocaust never occurred,

it’s a matter of perception

and logical reasoning

said a young tall guy,

PhD from MIT in artificial intelligence,

sitting on the floor with Merlot

at a literary party in Cambridge, Mass.

A condescending hint was flickering

in his mocking brown eyes.

And if it did—said, softening the point

his girlfriend, a knockout Harvard Law

in tight Donna Karan corduroys,

—it’s not virtually relevant anymore,

the train is gone, so to speak.

I got up and left the building

so as not to smash his precious head

with a Wal-Mart folding chair.

That night I woke up in my childhood:

Moscow, January frozen precipice,

through frosted window

a huge poster: People and Party Are United!

held still by a projector,

my grandma behind the wall,

tossing and turning in her bed, sobbing.

The usual: remembering

her mother and three sisters,

their fading smiles on the old photo from a letter.

In her nightmare: their last supper

of bread and carrot tea,

night before their disappearance

into historical irrelevance.

Lodz, 1943, melting gray snow,

charred carcasses, monstrous Panzer,

roaring pointlessly at one spot.

Polish policemen warming up in the yard,

passing vodka around,

cold lard and cigarette stubs:

Jeszcze Polska

Nie zginela

Poki my zyjemy.*

_____________________

*From an old Polish national anthem.