'ASHES' by Buddy Black

'ASHES'…  by Buddy Black….

 

ASHES were falling

Like winter snow,

Yet people who saw it

Claimed not to know

That what they were seeing

Was human 'snow'.

 

And the boxcars came

And the boxcars went,

Having disgorged the souls

The devil sent,

To stoke his evil fires of hell.

 

Hundreds,

Then thousands,

Then millions to come,

God only knows

The horrible sum.

 

And the bands played on

As the plan played out,

How could anyone person

Now have a doubt,

What this killing machine

Was all about.

 

Women and children

And babies all,

Young men, old men,

Big and small.

 

Their screams and pleas

Fell on the devils mute ears.

And no cared to see their tears,

As The SS came in the middle of the night

To complete their deed

Before the break of light.

 

Time was more valuable

Than these wretched souls,

Because the Final Solution

Was their driving goal.

They had no time

For hide and seek,

Yelling and screaming,

And killing the weak.

 

Individual men

With a common goal,

Each man conspired

And each shared the role,

Of tormentor, of killer

Of human souls.

 

And the boxcars came,

And empty they went,

Having disgorged the souls

The devil sent.

 

Separated by gender

Young and old,

In line they waited

In the freezing cold,

While the SS stripped them

Of clothing and gold.

 

Dogs, and whips,

Forced the soon dead foreword,

And they all knew by now,

It was death they marched toward.

 

An SS doctor

At the head of the line

Paid particular attention

To the sick and the dyin’,

And with the flick of a wrist

He sealed their doom,

And sent them off

To the killing rooms.

 

Auschwitz, Belzec, Maidanek

And Treblinka, death camps,

work camps,

It mattered not which,

For their fate was sealed

As they faced their doom,

And were herded like sheep

Into the killing rooms.

 

By gas, or by lead,

It mattered not now,

They had no choice

As to when, or to how,

It was simply a matter of time,

They all would be dead.

 

This conspiracy of death

Passed down from the top,

Like a snowball to hell

Near impossible to stop.

 

It soaked up the Jews,

And the gypsies all,

The sick and the well,

The young, and the old,

The big, and the small.

 

Through the stifling

Of Summers heat,

And winters biting cold,

Mothers now knew, their babes

Would never grow old.

 

And the boxcars came

And empty they went,

And soon the population

Was nearly all spent.

 

One million, Two million, Three million,

Four, Five million, Six million,

How many more!

The devil himself, and all of his men,

Could never put the world

Together again.

 

His bookkeepers, and ledger men,

His SS, and police,

Engineers, and oilers,

And all who stood by

Then tried to think of a suitable lie,

Like ‘following orders was all that I did,

How was I to know

What the devil had bid’.

 

But the world and they all

Share this terrible guilt,

For they each are a stitch

In this patch work quilt,

Woven with millions of human souls.

 

And ashes were falling

Like winter snow,

While ordinary men

Killed ordinary people,

Hoping the world would never know,

That what they were seeing

Was human 'snow'.