Like an urban graveyard,
over twenty-seven hundred
rectangular concrete blocks
cover four acres in central Berlin,
form a grid with alleys,
long and straight between the blocks
which loom like oversized nameless coffins.

A lack of individual names
illustrates the impossibility
of identifying every victim
caught in a trap
of order and precision
gone mad,
and it’s easy to get lost
among the massive slabs,
to feel hidden from the world,
confused, ostracized,
as the sun disappears and reappears
like hope
through the shadows.

As I visit today,
a group of young children
runs excitedly down the narrow passages
playing hide and seek
among the blocks,
and though some visitors are upset
by this total lack of understanding and reverence,
I envy their innocence of this horror,
their joy of life,
and the years that stretch ahead for them,
denied to all those
represented here.