Anne Frank’s House
When he came back from the camp, he asked
that the rooms remain bare, for lives
cannot be recreated, though the eye
searches for familiar patterns,
though the heart would remain heavy
at the final incompleteness
of it all. And she, the daughter,
learning to live behind drawn curtains,
would, no doubt, have wondered
why so many people from so many countries
would come to see how she and her family
almost lived here, fearful, not knowing.
In the cool of a November morning,
early to beat the crowds, we entered,
dutifully read the exhibition notices,
the reconstruction of diary excerpts,
the half-bidden, half-hidden comments
of one slowly learning what the world can offer:
emptiness and echoing stairs,
false partitions and curtains closed.
The bells of the Westerkerk still beat out the night,
like drums at a funeral procession along the canals.
And so, according to instructions, the rooms
are kept clear and the curtains kept drawn.
the hopes, seasons, moonlight and sunlight,
to this hidden place, this closed up sanctuary,
where, in an untrammelled mind, a god
takes the shape of trees, blossoming with silence,
takes the form of continents still to discover.
Now we can draw the curtains. Light pours in.
We can open the doors. We can watch the leaves falling.
We can witness to years. We can greet
the bells tolling, tolling. We can hear,
without cowering, the prayer for the dead,
for those who returned, for the many who visit,
for those of us who bear in our hearts
the leaves, fallen, falling and yet to fall,
those hiding still behind the curtains of the mind,
drawn against the dawn, afraid of the sunlight.
Harvey Gillman
15/12/13
