A scent of sadness drifts on aged canals;
her house, now open, once 'the hiding place'.
Faint whispers: uninvited guests ask, "How?",
"Could this have been us but for simple grace?"
They tiptoe quietly, hang heads in shame.
Who wouldn't as her history is told?
Low murmurs under breath, "Anne was her name".
"She was a sheep they slaughtered with the fold".
A young girl filled with normal childhood dreams,
such wonders she would write within 'that book',
but life had unexpected twists and schemes
and brevity lay in a corner nook.
How many hours did you spend behind
that bookshelf... reading - longing for
the light?
Fresh air and sunshine would have struck you
blind
as one who dwells in caverns black as night.
You never knew you'd have so many guests;
once feared the sound of knocking at your door.
You were denied the smallest of requests,
yet now you speak to throngs on Holland's shore.
A chapter in the book of Jewish life,
your diary, a witness to it all,
its lesson for our world of human strife:
the depth to where pure hatred lets us fall!
Anne Bryant-Hamon
© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 A.D.
|
Photo of Anne Frank
from The Hiding Place |
Note: I wrote this poem after visiting the
Hiding Place home of Anne Frank in Amsterdam, Holland in October, 1997.
I was always shocked by the stories and films about the Jewish holocaust,
and I still am. Pure, unadulterated hatred is an enigma. Some
day, evil will pass away forever out of God's universe. Come, Lord
Jesus -- come! |