Paper Lanterns

Oh little lantern,

So delicate,

So pale.

Frail; nothing more than thinly bound paper

Stretched over fragile quills

And filled with emptiness;

Effortless the wind that blows you

And shows you the way

To the ends of the sky

And the place of our birth

At the ends of the earth where the tears of the world

Build the clouds that will swell

When we cry.

A tenuous traveller

Cast to the heavens with a message,

A vestige of hope, carry love

On the breath of the last

To the ones that have passed and have left us behind,

Little lantern you remind us that we are still here,

Seeing clear in the midnight May sky

Looking up to the place where the face

Of our loved ones smile down.

What a beautiful sight.

Paper lantern, please take up our prayers,

For nobody cares more than we do

This night.

You fill up your sails

With the heat of our hearts

And it starts to release you from bonds

That you bore since the day you were picked

From the floor.

Oh frail lantern, as you swell with a fire

To fulfil your one purpose entire.

Please build up your strength for you carry

And marry a piece of our hearts and our souls,

As your goal is no more than to passage,

To shoulder our message to loved ones that stand

With the ageless divine, beyond the very fragments

Of time.

Little lantern you will soon soar on high,

To a place in the sky where we cannot follow,

Our sorrow is deep but we will not keep it

For you will soon take away sadness,

With gladness and help us adjust to the loss.

Delicate paper, enrapture our feelings;

The ceilings of heaven cannot keep you,

For your destination is far from the reaches of all

But you cannot here stall as you cradle despair,

To disperse in the air as you travel,

Unravel these feelings of anguish

Please vanquish these thoughts and scatter their scars

Far and beyond the most distant of stars.

Paper lantern we thank you for staying,

We’re praying that one day we’ll travel with you

To that very same place,

Where we’ll once again look on the face

Of our dear loved ones lost,

For they wait in an Eden, far from our side

But not from our hearts, deep inside

Where they stay here, forever.

Endeavour, little lantern, to carry our love

High above all the clouds that are filled with our tears.

Vanquish fears we’ll forget you,

We regret that you left but are thankful

We had you at all.

Though your life was a flash,

It was stunningly bright,

For you far outshone all other stars in the night.

And as we send up the lantern

To say our goodbye,

Your star shines forever in an endless night sky.

Copyright © 2011 by Simon Austin 

Forever dedicated to my uncle, Ronald Austin and family xxx

Humanity Lost

I freeze,

And fall to my knees.

The earth is cold tonight, my sight

Is sorrowed as I place my hands on its frozen surface,

No furnace to warm me, but bereft.

Here, on the borrowed hour

Of my death.

The frost seeping through my clothes

Chills my bones, I am lost here, alone.

The precipice in front of me is wide, and deep,

But full. I keep my head dipped,

Knowing they watch me

And mock me.

A pathetic excuse for man

I am; a parasite they long to vanish,

To banish and go from these lands that were free

Not so long ago….

How did I end up here?  Such fear.

What evil have I wielded in this life

Or the last

That justifies my final moment?

I have seen the past and the present, but no future,

No more will I stand as I grasp at my knees

On the floor, in the dirt that consumes me

And is ready to lose me to the worms

In the bullets and blood,

Left to die and to rot

In the mud.

Soon now, near obsolete,

A front row seat

To my own annihilation.

Devastation, wiped clean, buried.

When I, the very last in 'sin'

Of twenty-eight thousand lost,
Falls in.

I sink further into the soil.

Turmoil.  Lingerer.

The harbinger of death

Extends my suffering,

Shuffling behind.

For the sheer joy to witness my distress,

They aggress.

I hear the serpent tongues licking the air,

Tasting my fear;

Rejoicing.

I peer once more into my open tomb.

To fall soon, I see my place

Between the face of the old and the young,

The father, the son,

The well and the weak,

The proud and the meek,

Innocent, all, now done.

I feel god smile,

Thanking me for my presence

But turning away, shielding his eyes.

Even he denies that man can wield such brutality,

For my finality, even the heavens

Cannot stand.

It is said that only the dead will see
The end of war - a small salvation,
In the face of a nation destroyed
By the passing of law.

It seems though I will live long enough to witness

The perdition of sanity

And the destruction of hope,

At the end of humanity,
Here, on the very horizon of my life.

I hear the click of the barrel,

His apparel rustles at the effort.

The cold steel, real now,

Presses against my temple,

And chills my soul.

My skull, braced.

I close my eyes

And whisper ‘please’

But useless these words are,

In such hatred, such darkness,
As everything,
Suddenly and permanently passes,

Into nothing.

Copyright © 2011 by Simon Austin 

Based upon and inspired by the photograph 'The Last Jew in Vinnitsa'

In summer 1941, in their push to invade Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler’s German army marched through Ukraine. On July 19th, Vinnitsa, Ukraine was captured by German troops. Some 28,000 Jews were massacred by the Nazis. According to the census data of 1926, 21,800 Jews lived in the region which means the entire Jewish people were exterminated in Vinnitsa.

This famous picture, inscribed on the back of the photo as of the Last Jew in Vinnitsa, was taken by a German SS Soldier. The man, thought to have been the very last to be executed in Vinnitsa, is seen kneeling in front of a mass grave, his haunting face and hollow, distracted eyes became symbolic of the Holocaust.  Present in the background of the photo are members of the German Army, the German Labor Service, and the Hitler Youth.