Had children prayed

Did aryan children sing at Christmas time

As their fathers trouped through blood filled camps

Did they sweetly pray for peace and love

While SS boots so loudly stamped?

Did their mothers watch their children play

While Jews and Gypsies, misfits, friends,

Were throw like trash

Into countless ovens fiery end?

When they breathed in air of burning stench-

Did they question where and why

Or pretend those clouds of red and ash filled gray

Was an incendiary sky?

Had they prayed in churches holy worship

As the cattle trains passed by

Could they blame untold murders every day

On unknown ‘others’ with no alibi?

Did they not notice countless empty homes

Beatings, yellow stars upon their neighbors clothes?

While their children went to school and played.

Did they notice not all were blue eyed Aryan blondes

With up turned ‘christian’ nose?

In schoolyards, in their sheltered world,

Aryan children, on Germanys Aryan soil...

Never questioned starved and charred black bodies

From which not a one would make them all recoil

Do you think the prayers these aryans prayed

Was to stop the madness histories seen-

Or to pray they they’d be victorious

To make this world they thought was theirs,

Aryan pristine.

If only prayers could guarantee

The end of agony

I’d pray each moment of my life,

No matter where I’d be...

I’d address all angels of some lord

I’d sanctify some Holy name

I’d bless unknown saviors glories

To shelter us from further shame.

I’d bless the Jews and Christians,

Gypsies, Muslims, Gays;

All children newly born--

And grant finally upon this earth

That nevermore from wars

Shall even one with sad remorse

For just a moment

Need a death to mourn...

For it is love that we must ever share

To remember we are truly equal born.

corrine schlessel ©2008