mybeautfulthings

I’ve set up my glass workshop again now that we won’t be needing the dining room for a while and I’ve cut a couple of pieces today ready for Valentine’s Day.

Blue glass from the Victorian window

Using off-cut glass

There are periwinkles in flower in the front garden.

Today’s poem is “If This Is A Man” by Primo Levi on this Holocaust Memorial Day.

“The following words were written by Primo Levi, a Jew who suffered, during World War II, in the Nazi work camp known as Monowitz, aka Auschwitz III.

 “If this is a man”.

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.