The Woman in Dark Clothes
(for Edith Stein)
She adored Husserl, the depths of his thought.
But philosophy was not enough for her.
She became a student of love.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.
They were not aliens from another planet.
They put their human faces on just like us before they dropped Zyklon B in a hole
in the roof and waited for the bodies to fall.
That they shared in our common humanity
somehow made monsters of us all.
But why should we feel responsible
for their crimes,
when we barely recognize our own?
But the stain remains just the same.
It will take all of human history to recover
from that loss.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.
