Closing in!

I'm just a day away from finishing my poetry blog project now, but don't cry for I shall continue blogging after it's over.
The next section in Holocaust Poetry is "Destruction." One of the poems in this section is by Elie Wiesel, whose work I've had some experience with before. Specifically, I remember reading his Night in high school, which I found to be very thought provoking. This poem, "Never Shall I Forget," is just as stirring as his novel and it is a grim reminder of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. Rather vaguely, it speaks of children being burned and other horrendous acts which tested the narrators faith, which he claims to have "murdered my God and my soul/ and turned my dreams to dust" (42). So, this poem seems to not just be about what happened to the narrator, but also how it tested his faith, although we don't ultimately see in the poem whether or not he still has faith.
"Roads" by Peter Huchel (translated by Michael Hamburger) seems to me to be a poem that relies heavily on visuals to strike the reader, which gives the poem a very dark tone. It speaks of flames in the sky, ashes in the wind, corpses being tossed around, and other images of death. Considering the title, I would say this poem has to do with how multiple fates cross paths or intersect in some way, which is very interesting considering it seems to be about death.
This section, even more than the rest of the book it seems, contains very dark and sad poems. "Pigtail" by Tadeusz Rozewicz tells of a mound of hair that has been shaved off a group of people before they are taken to be burned and within that pile is a ponytail from a child. These poems may not all have a deep, hidden meaning, but they all send a very clear message about how many people the Holocaust has affected and just how much damage was done.
The next section of the book, a fairly short one, is "Rescuers, Bystanders, and Perpetrators." "I Did Not Manage To Save" is a poem about a narrator who was unable to help or save anyone, although it seems he did want to help. It seems he was always too late or didn't know how to help. This is very sad to think about, especially when considering all the people who could have helped during the Holocaust, but didn't want to.
"A German Requiem" by James Fenton is a long, reflective piece that seems to ponder the tragedies of the Holocaust and the ways different people viewed it. It says that it's "...not what they built. It's what they knocked down" (103). This is most likely referring to the fact that even though Germany became very powerful during the Nazi regime, they did so by committing terrible acts and that is what will be remembered. I think that taking this out of the context of the Holocaust, this could apply to how people often are blind-sighted by their own accomplishments and don't event think about how they harmed others in the process. Clearly, there is much to learn from these poems, other than just using them as a sort of introspective look at the period of time in which they were written, for there are often valuable lessons we can take from them.