Numbers Poem by Dónall Dempsey

The voice
is dead.

The body
a shell
used only
to transport

the words

that can only
tell & re-tell

what can not be
said

the foreverness of the phrase

“...the day the soldiers came...”

Raped again & again

a dirty rag soaked in petrol

inserted into
her

set aflame

he watches his mother
burn

amongst the horror
of the laughter

numbers that add up
to nothing

(Dachau...Dachau.)

bite into his arm
that feed upon the soul

that flees trying to escape
running through the blood

trapped by the pounding
of his heart

the guilt...of still
being

numbers blurring
into my tears

the shame that I am
alive

bearing witness
even from this distance

this far... removed

his suffering
tattooed upon my skin

like numbers
adding up to nothing

blurring
into my tears.

*******
WRITING...NUMBERS

This came from an experience back in 1977 when I attended a writer’s workshop at THE GRAPEVINE art’s centre. I was just tentatively starting out to write... putting one word carefully in front of the other(careful where the foot falls) writing in the dark...in the innocence of my ignorance...I had the arrogance to think that I too could write.

The workshop(where we read and where others took us apart and hopefully put us back together gently and with enough hope to continue writing...we did the same for them...and where I discovered my life-long friend John Grundy who was instrumental in me in any way at all continuing) was disappointedly cancelled(without warning) for that particular night. I was crestfallen. I had travelled up the 30 something miles to Dublin clutching my fistful of words in order to stuff them into someone’s ears in order that they might have wandered around in someone’s mind and make them wonder.
Instead, a man was to give a talk. He had written the book JUSTICE AT NUREMBURG. He travelled all around the world again and again from city to city from gatherings such as this to television telling the story(lest it should fade) again and again so that it should be heard. He was a dead man. Walking. I had never seen someone alive and dead at the same time. I remembered thinking it would be better to not be alive and have your soul visible and suffer in this way. It was unbearable and fascinating. I wanted to tear my eyes out but I couldn’t tear my eyes away...my ears had to hear. He talked in a dead monotone as if his voice had been erased or had worn itself out in the telling and re-telling. When he got to the part about his mother(I had never envisaged an act so violent and now that he planted it inside my brain I can’t get it out of my mind...I can’t un-visage it.) he told it in the same unchanging tone as if he were reciting a dull poem and the words although they had to be said...were of no interest. This burned into my mind. I am doomed never to forget it just as he was doomed to live and re-live it in all its horror. Even at this remove I find even the story of it unbearable...the unrepeatable that has to be...repeated or...

Or.

“Entschuldigung, aber...ich habe vollig vergessen... “
(“ Forgive me...I’ve forgotten all about...”)

I told an annoyed German customer at Portobello Market whom I had faithfully promised to procure a copy of Resnais’s NUIT ET BRUILARD.

He left saying: “Schon gut! ”(“Forget it! ”)

An elderly gentleman hearing this harsh exchange manically rolled up his sleeve and thrusting his arm under my astonished gaze cried out in anguish:

“Forget…how can I forget! ”

He left ushered on by a woman who said: “Hush... Papa...hush! ”

The numbers tattooed upon his arm still burn into my mind.