Graveyard Planet

"To die one's own death has always been a freedom subject to loss by accident, but in Planet Auschwitz . . . the loss of [this freedom] was made essential, and its survival accidental."
- Emil Fackenheim, "The Holocaust and Philosophy."
The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 82, Issue 10, Eighty-Second Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct. 1985), p511

in an unframed nightmare painting
i witnessed the chimneys in motion
lonely sweet-burning castles
making scarce the dear blue sky

where mindless walkers swayed
under rusting pendulums

on this graveyard planet

where countless hordes of spindled limbs
danced at the end of a tightrope

beneath the hissing and barking guards
i heard an orchestra of ghouls
playing their dead chords
in an endless nightmare concerto