Reflections of my visit to a monument on the site of a concentration camp in Riga, Latvia which at the time was still in the USSR. The monument had the words ‘Behind these Walls the Earth is Moaning’ inscribed on it.        

The Train track

Leers it ugly past

It crowded its cattle

And shoved them there.

‘Behind

These Walls

The Earth

Is Moaning‘

The towering

Bodies

Shadow

The Ground.

So Big,

The grounds

 Are so

Immense.

Notches

On the

Wall filled

With dust,

Like the

Latest

Conquest

On a

Tired Old

Man’s Bed.

Eerie

Silence.

Except for the click of tourists and

The statistics of a communist guide.

The train track

Leers it’s ugly past

The coach ignores it.

The tour is over.

And speeds off to see another site.

Jackie Sear 10/7/1988

This was chosen by poet and author, Jackie Kay, as the winning poem in a competition at Hammersmith & West London College in 1989.