To Save For Tomorrow

A found poem base on Elie Wiesel's novel Night.

So that was where we were going. Poor devils.

We were all people condemned to the same fate.

The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.

Was I still alive? Was I awake?

Soon I would wake up with a start.

I had to. All this could not be real.

A nightmare perhaps. I pinched myself. No.

My forehead was covered in cold sweat.

All around me people were talking.

They were all smiles; all things considered.

It seemed they were talking with Death itself.

Death, which settled in all around me.

There was little air. Death caressed each of them.

I sat in silence, tasting the bitterness of fear.

Death enveloped me, it suffocated me,

but it lasted no more than a few seconds.

Those few seconds seemed like an eternity.

And yet, the gloom had lifted, I was saved.

Tomorrow could be worse yet.

But I was saved for tomorrow.

Author's Note

If you have not read it, Night is a recollection of Elie Wiesel's experience in the Holocaust. This poem is a combination of sentences and phrases from his novel, none of it my own. The poem is set when they are being sent to a camp in the cattle cars and have just found out exactly where they're headed.