Dying Thoughts of Dr Josef Mengele, while Having a Stroke and Drowning off the Coast of Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil, 7 February, 1979
Bertioga. [Wikimedia Commons.]
Dying Thoughts of Dr Josef Mengele, while Having a Stroke and Drowning off the Coast of Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil, 7 February, 1979
When you’re drowning,
the water
bubbles above you,
through the translucence
to the undulate surface.
Beyond is the sky,
azure today.
The sun is a disk
of hammered, hot gold.
My head’s in a vice.
My right side is numb.
I sink fast. I know
there is no way back.
I fade, yet I remember
those eyes,
the eyes
of terrified children.
But it was my work,
and I am not sorry.
(Acknowledgements: poem previously appeared in Quadrant magazine and my latest poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws…I’m Feeling Too Indolent, Ginninderra Press.)
Read more from Kevin Densley HERE
Kevin Densley’s latest poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws…I’m Feeling Too Indolent, is available HERE
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
Back in the 80’s I accompanied the Federal Health Minister on an overseas trip. We visited a very impressive multi storey aged care facility in Vienna. It had been built around the site of the Jewish cemetery and the graves and headstones had been preserved in the grassed central courtyard. I thought it strange and sobering that nursing home residents had a view of a graveyard.
As a young man I felt supernumerary to the official visit and the plight of the residents in God’s Waiting Room. Trailing behind the official party when a voice called out in English “young man what are you doing here?” The old lady told me she was Jewish and had wisely fled Austria at the time of the Anschluss in 1938. She worked as an official translator in London during WW2.
She was one of those people you knew had hours of fascinating memories, but I only had 5 minutes before being reported AWOL. Her departing words were “do you know what all the old Austrians in here tell me? The only mistake we made was not having more headstones in the cemetery.”
Josef drowned – but his hatred and fascism lives on in a thousand guises.
Thank you for your thought-provoking and highly interesting response, Peter.
Powerful words KD!
Loved your response PB.
Thanks, Col, for your comment. I did feel (and intend that) this poem packed a clout, but it’s up to readers like yourself to decide, of course.