The Toss - Cyrus Cassells

I see a knife-grinder

On his dusty, stationary bicycle,

A black Star of David

Sprayed over a door,

As you urge me

Into the rationed light,

The crumbling pearl-grey

Of the ghetto.

All at once, the Roman spring,

With its galaxy of columns

And daisies,

Becomes the autumn of families

Plummeting from windows,

The desecrated autumn

Your mother tossed you,

Small bundle,

To a passerby.

Like this, you demonstrate

With a parcel.


But what can't be mimed

Is the look they shared,

The look that let you live;

Her toss that had to be

Quick, quick,

Before the cat-pounce Nazis came—

Out the shutters

Into the samaritan's intrepid arms:

Something unerring

Passing through the air

Of an iron universe—


As the knife-grinder pedals and pedals,

You whisper: I know nothing

Of what became of her.


Perhaps she soothed a boy

Born in the Lager,

Listless, mute, whose Lilliputian arm

Bore the tattoo of Auschwitz.

She would have coaxed him

To lift his intransigent eyes,

Knowing you might also be

Somewhere among the living.


And against the jackboot, the demolition,

For as long as she was able, she


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