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I'm searching for a poem. It came into my head and I can't remember where I
first heard it. It's so clear though in its fragmented way. I think it's from
my grandma-that is I think she told it to me. It was a poor translation when I
first heard it, wherever I heard it, and i'm sure that it's an even poorer one now that my memory's had its
way with it. It goes, 'Now that I fell on the side of the street, I know what it
is to be-' and I can't remember what comes next. To be what? The
next word, I imagine, is the crucial adjective or maybe noun. And I'm bad with
poetry, but this one seems so clear, both in my memory and in its meaning, or at
least it would be if only I knew that next word. What does one learn when they've
fallen down on the side of the street? What did my grandma know that it was to be?
And why do I want to know this? I'm writing a script for a movie, you see.
It's a movie about my grandma, and I'm trying to 'establish her character.'
Poetry was always important to her, she memorized it and recited it, even in the
camps. There's a book of poetry that she and a group of other women wrote from
memory while they were in one of the labor camps. They wrote it in secret with
materials they stole from the assembly line where they were making bullets, just
like my grandma's diary. They didn't just write poetry
though, they sang and they danced and they told each other stories, and my dad
says it's how they kept the beauty of the civilized world alive in the moral
abyss of the Holocaust. But anyway, the Holocaust Museum in Washington has the
book of poetry. I'm trying to get a translation of it from them, but the curator
there won't return my e-mails. I want that book of poetry to look for beautiful
metaphorical material with which to open my movie. And I know I could make it up
but I don't want to because I want something real, something that shows who my
grandmother is that doesn't just come from me, but I know that's a load
of crap because I also know that in the end whatever meaning I find in it would
be only the product of my own fantasies. So I'm afraid of depending on these
poems too much, but even so I tried calling the curator a while ago and she said
she'd get one of her interns to send me whatever translations they had, though I
haven't gotten anything yet. And here I am now and all I have is this fragmentary
memory of a poem that I might have once heard my grandma recite, but by now after
all the time it's spent stewing in my head, it's
probably reflects me more than her, and
isn't that fitting.
But I can't stop looking for it and can't get over the idea that if I find it
i'll have something 'real,' and I've looked through the transcript of my interview
with her, and the transcripts of all the interviews with my dad. I've looked
through her diary, and, in case I'm misattributing the poem, looked through the
diaries of the two other women from the camp. I've looked through all my own
notes. I even looked at the photos I took when I was at the exhibit at the
Holocaust Museum in 2010 because I remember the book of poetry is on display
there with a bit of wall text of a translation of one of the poems! But all my
photos of that part of the exhibition were too wide and my camera wasn't hi res
enough so when I zoom in to the text it falls apart into pixels and I can't read
anything. And isn't that a great metaphor? It's not true though, I'm lying, I
only said it because it's such a great metaphor. I actually can make out a little
and it says the poem is by a 'Betsy' or a 'Betzy' and it's called 'Fatigue'
and it says something about night and I can tell that it's not the poem I'm looking for.
Though can I actually read those words or is it just some faint memory forming a
pattern out of the pixels? For the sake of transparency (and I hope so that I
might regain your trust as a reader after my preceding abuse of power as
narrator) here's the photo so you can zoom in on it and look for a pattern in
the pixels too, so please click on it and I'd be curious to know what you see:
Could you read anything? You, more than me, are the ideal viewer. She is not your
grandmother (unless she is) and you have not been to that room in the Holocaust Museum (unless you have).
You, the uninitiated,
bring no prior assumptions to your viewing (unless you do) and you see whatever there is to see with clear
and objective eyes (unless you don't), right? Though I hope that I didn't influence the objectivity your viewing
by saying earlier that I thought the title said 'Fatigue' and it was by a
'Betsy' or a 'Betzy' and that it said something about night.
So here we are, looking for something 'real' to grab
onto, some beautiful metaphorical poem that tells us who my grandma is now that
she's fallen down on the side of the road, but all we have is that she is, and it's
not even her, it's us and our memory.
Now that I've fallen on the side of the road, I know what it is to be.
But hang on, I just found it... I remembered an interview she gave to the SHOAH
foundation in 1996.