The following is a poem from the book:
"...I never saw another butterfly..."
This book shows the poems of children from
the Terezin Concentration Camp during World War Two.
On a Sunny Evening
On a purple, sun-shot evening
Under wide-flowering chestnut trees
Upon the threshold full of dust
Yesterday, today, the days are
all like these.
Trees flower forth in beauty,
Lovely too their very wood all
gnarled and old
That I am half afraid to peer
Into their crowns of green and
gold.
The sun has made a veil of gold
So lovely that my body aches.
Above, the heavens shriek with
blue
Convinced I've smiled by some mistake.
The world's abloom and seems to
smile.
I want to fly but where, how high?
If in barbed wire, things can bloom
Why couldn't I? I will not
die!
1944 Anonymous
Written by children in Barracks L 318 and L 417,
ages 10 - 16 years.
Feelings Evoked in Reading "On a Sunny Evening"
Little children barred from life.
In a place, but not a home.
Nowhere to go; nowhere to hide.
Yet their spirits want to fly
In the smiling blue sky.
Home, sweet children, safe in your hearts.
Abusers, vainly barbed and gnarled.
Dear bouyant beauty, it does not die,
And of my spirit
....neither shall I.
Christopher P@pile
www.adoptedlife.com