SCOTT PENDER'S TEREZÍN TEXT
THE BUTTERFLY
Pavel Friedman, 1942
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterfies don't live here,
In the ghetto.
I'D LIKE TO GO ALONE
Alena Synková
I'd like to go away alone
Where there are other, nicer people,
Somewhere into the far unknown,
There, where no one kills another.
Maybe more of us,
A thousand strong,
Will reach this goal
Before too long.
___________________
I never saw another butterfly
Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezín Concentration Camp 1942-1944 (Copyright 1978 by Artia, Prague) and used with kind permission of the translator Jeanne Nemcová.
Pavel Friedman, 1942
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterfies don't live here,
In the ghetto.
I'D LIKE TO GO ALONE
Alena Synková
I'd like to go away alone
Where there are other, nicer people,
Somewhere into the far unknown,
There, where no one kills another.
Maybe more of us,
A thousand strong,
Will reach this goal
Before too long.
___________________
I never saw another butterfly
Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezín Concentration Camp 1942-1944 (Copyright 1978 by Artia, Prague) and used with kind permission of the translator Jeanne Nemcová.