Shoes on the Bank of the Danube
On a sunny day in Budapest
The Danube Promenade offers a serene stroll.
The Royal Palace perched on Castle Hill
Greets you under an azure sky
And the mountains of Buda wave brightly
Their wooded hands across the river.
But along your peaceful walk listen
To the quiet murmur of the Danube,
Listen to the shifting waves that whisper
About bottomless grieves and sorrows.
The river drifts irremovable memories,
On the flowing waters float
Myriad sad stories.
Not far from the Parliament building
And the Academy of Sciences
Sculpted shoes cast in iron
Line the left bank of the Danube;
Between Roosevelt Square and Kossuth Square:
Sixty period-exact footwear,
In the style of the 1940s, conceived
And created by the sculptor Gyula Pauer
And the poet Janos Can Togay.
Attached to the top of the stone embankment,
The shoes symbolize real shoes of real people
Who lost their lives here.
They commemorate thousands of persecuted
Men, women and children,
Mostly Jews, who were murdered
By Nazi thugs in the terrible days
Of the Hungarian Arrow Cross terror
Between October 1944 and February 1945.
While the Soviet Red Army had encircled
Budapest and its units were already fighting
In the suburbs of the capital, Arrow Cross
Militiamen rounded up Jews in groups of fifty
To sixty and led them to the bridges linking
Pest with Buda.
When they reached the river bank
The executioners told their frightened victims
To remove their shoes and put all their jewellery,
Watches, money and other valuables inside.
And then they shot them into a freezing death.
Drift ice floated on the winter Danube,
The water turned red from the blood of the victims
As the river carried away their bodies.
On a serene walk along the Danube
Listen to the quiet murmur of the river.
Listen to the shifting waves that whisper
About bottomless grieves and sorrows.
The river drifts irremovable memories,
On the flowing waters float myriad sad stories.
poem by Paul Hartal
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
No comments until now.