Here you will find the Poem A Camp in the Prussian Forest of poet Randall Jarrell
I walk beside the prisoners to the road. Load on puffed load, Their corpses, stacked like sodden wood, Lie barred or galled with blood By the charred warehouse. No one comes to-day In the old way To knock the fillings from their teeth; The dark, coned, common wreath Is plaited for their grave - a kind of grief. The living leaf Clings to the planted profitable Pine if it is able; The boughs sigh, mile on green, calm, breathing mile, From this dead file The planners ruled for them. . One year They sent a million here: Here men were drunk like water, burnt like wood. The fat of good and evil, the breast's star of hope were rendered into soap. I paint the star I sawed from yellow pine - And plant the sign In soil that does not yet refuse Its usual Jews Their first asylum. But the white, dwarfed star - This dead white star - Hides nothing, pays for nothing; smoke Fouls it, a yellow joke, The needles of the wreath are chalked with ash, A filmy trash Litters the black woods with the death of men; and one last breath Curls from the monstrous chimney . . I laugh aloud Again and again; The star laughs from its rotting shroud Of flesh. O star of men!
