The Storm

Taken from the book, "... And I never saw another butterfly" this is a poem written by Jirka Polak, who was one of those 100 children who survived the ordeal at Terezin concentration camp. Jirka Polak was born February 1925. He was taken from Prague to Terezin in August 1942. When he was 17, he was deported from Terezin to Auschwitz. This is his poem, "The Storm" written during his years at Terezin.
                  

The heavens sense our burden:

the threat of future downpours

I carry on my back.

We are drunk on wine vinegar.

The nearing storm rouses me,

"The nearing storm rouses me,
it wants me to shake the world."

it makes me want to shake the world.
                  

We are an assemble of misery.

If our hands are bloody,

it is from the blood of our own wounds.

The grotesque scars

we bear on our bodies

testify to battles fought

that went unrecognized.
                   

But the next storm will unfurl our flag
and uproot the rotted trees!
The we, together with the gusting wind,
will scale Spilberk's* heights,
and stand victory on the peaks of cliffs,
our hair blowing freely in the wind.


*Spilberk was a famous jail in the Middle Ages in the city of Brno