Waiting at a Station

Imagine yourself meat shoved into an oven

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Mutual suffocation from human gasses

Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens

Body heat raging from ten-to-the-dozen

Brown paper packages tied-up with string

And two-per-square-foot of us are heaps of molasses

These are a few of my favourite things

Waiting at a station; a platform and a sign

A cattle truck of luggage and carcasses

Gasping for air and begging for water

A soldier came by and offered to trade

He took money and jewels - mother's diamond ring

These were nothing to throats as dry as a blade

And desiccated lives that were deaths to be made

He pocketed our payment and moved off down the track

"Yes, yes! I'll bring you water," he jovially said

But he never came back

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

You could never tell children who just want to play

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

The past is the past and has nothing to say

Silver white winters that melt into springs

I'll journey with the future, but never by train

These are a few of my favourite things

And I'll live for the present, for it never comes again

Reviews

[Crowley]

Christ....dude you made me tear up on this one....is that what you wanted? Not gonna stop until Rowley cries? This is so perfect and so sad, and so cool and so so good. This is a winner my friend, this above all needs to get out to the masses, I so wish to hell I would have came up with this, but I am not good enough. Master class is now in session. I bow and surrender my f*****g pen.

[Buddhistboy73]

Ok, I'm not the world's best at getting all "arsey" with "clever" reviews, but I LOVED THIS PIECE!!
Great interplay between the song and the poem, and I love the rhyming on this one too....for me (I may be wrong?), the middle stanza evoked images of the cattle trucks used to transport jews to Auschwitz.....(only my cynical view I might add), but very moving poem, and yeah, I've thought the same thing many a time being stuck on the Central Line in London.....
Good write!

[Adelia Alighieri]

I find the structure very..different. The middle stanza has no precise rhythm that matches with it's partners. But:
the first and last verses were OUTSTANDING! Wow, you are gifted Devons, you truly are! There are pieces you read and you wish you could REALLY write like those but you can't. You just CAN'T. This is one such kind. Goes in my favorites, this is one of the best poems I've read in a REALLY long time. Standing "O".

[emmajoy]

This is more than heart breaking brilliance, it's an epitaph to all those who were 'meat shoved into an oven'. The way you've written the truth and nothing but the truth interspersed withthe bouncy, meaningless words of that song reaches deep inside me.

That last stanza leaves me speechless, and fearful of history past - talk about man's inhumanity to man ..

' ..He pocketed our payment and moved off down the track ~ "Yes, yes! I'll bring you water," he jovially said ~ But he never came back ..'

[Sweet_pale_cacophony]

I like the format of the poem..i like how so neatly the famous song has been suffused into this evocative subject.'Imagine yourself meat shoved into an oven'...this first line itself was so strong,it was only a mere reflection of what was to come.I also like 'And two-per-square-foot of us are heaps of molasses'..i like how you have used 'molasses' here,there is something about this word..(it has lingered for a long time in my mind now,i want to put it in one of my poems..i just don't know how).It was so apt here,growing up in India..i just know what it is like traveling in a train in summers....imagining what it could be when people were shoved in like cattle just to be transported towards death camps makes me shudder..
It is very clever how you have incorporated the track from 'sound of music',keeping in mind that the movie was about a family trying to survive in one of the most vulnerable periods of our times when humanity was tested..which your write deals with too.Some collective scars take time to heal..perhaps they will never heal..holocaust,Hiroshima bombing etc....
I like how you end this..and i always like this about your poems.However strong the theme is you do not get overboard with it..you have a very discerning view and it helps.You do not try to evoke any specific emotions...you could have done with this one,you could have gone on and on about the time..but you don't....you wrote it in a way which is objective,intelligent,justified..You write as it comes to you and leave the final opinion to your readers.You do not coerce any view..(maybe i am going a bit off track here :) )..
The write ends on a positive note and that is what i like...one has to 'live'..it is only the present..only the present which does matter.It is human nature that the past gnaws at us so often but then...maybe it is asking from us to learn and live.
Excellent work..

[R J Askew]

I don't know why, but I like the soldier, I can imagine myself being stuck in that situation ... all those effing trains coming through ... all those desperate folk ... what a chore ... so, I do a little trade and tell a little lie ... maybe some poet will write about me in sixty years time, what do I care? ... understanding the soldier is part of the whole deal and you captured his bit part in the big drama. It cld easily all happen again, probably will, because it is still in us and we have a model to go beyond now. If humans can, they will. We are dangerous animals. And there will be many other soldiers looking for small advangages in the evil.

[Melody]

you're really great! not everyone can write like u do!

[mirabella]

Wow, perfect way to begin this. The lines of that memorable well-known song work to contradict the pain in the lines it shelters, enhance the pain and emotions in those other lines, and also be the hope, as that song was sung to outlast fear. So yes, brilliant beginning. Great technique.
And you captured these raw emotions so well. Wonderful.

[Fran Marie]

Imagine yourself meat shoved into an oven
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Mutual suffocation from human gasses
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Body heat raging from ten-to-the-dozen

Oh Devon, this poem tears at the soul and makes one weep for what went down in Treblinka ~ the graphic detail of these people's fate which awaited the at that station/ Nazi german death camps a holocaust of pure horror and terror, it's a cruel painful memory in history a time people shant forget~how you incorporated the favorite things song in between lines of torture is pure genius to show by comparison these people cannot have those favorite things~EVER, oh my god this is so very sad to read ,,,,even if by chance they dare to dream of such things it's not likely to soften the blow of final death in such brutal slaughtering fashion

[Radiohead]

I didn't expect this, at all. You blew me right out of the water. It is AMAZING!

[.]

This is haunting, with the 'sound of music' mingling into the hell you create in our minds..I am moved beyond anything I have read here. The images of those people in the trains being transported to their deaths ..breaks my heart..My dad was saying the other day, that when it was first reported on, noone believed it, because it was so horrendous..you penned this with grace and respect. saluted.