The Holocaust never occurred,
it’s a matter of perception
and logical reasoning
said a young tall guy,
PhD from MIT in artificial intelligence,
sitting on the floor with Merlot
at a literary party in Cambridge, Mass.
A condescending hint was flickering
in his brown eyes of the half-blood.

And if it did—said, softening the point
his girlfriend, a knockout Harvard Law
in tight Donna Karan corduroys,
with whom I just pedophilically flirted
a minute ago—it’s not
virtually relevant anymore,
the train is gone, so to speak.

I got up and left the building
so not to smash his precious head
with a Wal-Mart folding chair.

That night I woke up in my childhood:
Moscow, January frozen precipice,
through frosted window
a huge poster: People and Party Are United!
held still by a projector,
my grandma behind the wall,
tossing and turning in her bed, sobbing.

The usual: remembering
her mother and three sisters,
their fading smiles on the old photo from a letter.
In her nightmare: their last supper
of bread and carrot tea,
night before their disappearance
into historical irrelevance.

Lodz, 1943, melting gray snow,
charred carcasses, monstrous Panzer,
roaring pointlessly at one spot.

Polish policemen warming up in the yard,
passing vodka around,
cold lard and cigarette stubs:

Jeszcze Polska
Nie zginela
Poki my zyjemy.*

*From the old Polish national anthem.