Anthony Hecht - The Book of Yolek lyrics

Wir Haben ein Gesetz, Und nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben. The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk Down the fern trail. It doesn't matter where to, Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home, And among midsummer hills have set up camp In the deep bronze glories of declining day. You remember, peacefully, an earlier day In childhood, remember a quite specific meal: A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp. That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk; More than you dared admit, you thought of home: No one else knows where the mind wanders to. The fifth of August, 1942. It was the morning and very hot. It was the day They came at dawn with rifles to The Home For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk In close formation off to a special camp. How often you have thought about that camp, As though in some strange way you were driven to, And about the children, and how they were made to walk, Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal And shamble between armed guards to his long home. We're approaching August again. It will drive home The regulation torments of that camp Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal, The electric fences, the numeral tattoo, The quite extraordinary heat of the day They all were forced to take that terrible walk. Whether on a silent, solitary walk Or among crowds, far off or safe at home, You will remember, helplessly, that day, And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp. Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too. His unuttered name will interrupt your meal. Prepare to receive him in your home some day. Though they k**ed him in the camp they sent him to, He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.