Gloucester, England,1945
word was everywhere
unseen all through the war
a newsreel
no unaccompanied children
a challenge too irresistible
I put on a beggar face
a stranger took my shilling
bought me a ticket.
the concentration camp at Belsen
liberated by helmeted Tommies
who wipe their weeping away
children my age
striped pyjamas
heads shaved like turnips
frozen eyes
peering across
coiled snakes of barbed wire
hundreds
of naked stick-thin corpses
stacked like driftwood.
