Haibun - Sixty Years' Passing

Sixty Years' Passing

On the loading ramp of a
Berlin train station there
are candles in the snow.
The railway tracks at Auschwitz
have parallel lines of flame.

In my early childhood, I knew
old men and women with
numbers on their forearms.
Their numbers have dwindled.
The German President was silent.

winter fog --
the stillness of barbed wire
the absence of Japan