Sara Robinson’s most recent poem to appear here was “Writing Poetry With Putin” (January 2017)

The Gift

(inspired by the obituary of Rudolf Brazda, 98, one of the last known survivors
of those sent to Nazi concentration camps because they were homosexual)

On his wooden planked bed
shared with molding hay-filled
ticking and scrawny rats
he remembered it had been years
since the big deportation.
The tattered pink triangle
on the gauze-thin uniform
still burned like the brand it was.

He starved and waited
a painful wait with famished
muscles tensed constantly in
fear of nightly visits
by those who used steel rods
to enforce their brutality
just a little more viciously.

He could see sometimes moonlight
through small chinks in the concrete
walls and he cried inside as
he saw more of his kind die
at the quarries doing work fit for no man.

When he knew that he was spared, he asked,
Why was I saved? Who dared show me kindness?

He found a way out–avoided the death march,
lucky that freedom found him when he
had just enough strength to open a door.

He began a love in his remaining years
that lasted until his age of ninety-eight:
memories of his horror faded or
hidden by joys he had found,

in a good life in which
he once told someone
that being gay was a gift from God.