COMMODITY (1943)
to Symborska's memory

What an oddity
the world thinks of us
as a commodity
at a blink and loss
we are not to be sold
for forty pieces
of silver or gold
yet we are told daily
not to be temperamental
we are by the threshold
of a bidding war
to skin us alive
yet we want to console
our flesh to survive
hiding the yellow stars
on cattle cars
in the far country
we stand by the manger
as a stranger to the creche
or by Jesus cross
with 1943 nails
upon the tree
three souls are bargaining
for their lives
by Warsaw's ghetto gates
it starts to snow
we ask for angels
as a poets life waits
not lost to our manifold soul.