POETRY

The Quiet Violin

By Doug Rutledge     VOLUME 49.4     2015 AUBURN WITNESS POETRY PRIZE RUNNER-UP

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Saint Augustine wondered
          how he could remember
                    forgetfulness,
since he had already forgotten
          what he was trying to recall.


Do I die to my mother
          when she cannot remember
me, being reborn during moments
          of lucidity, like the death camp
musician unable to recollect
          the sound of serenading
his family, for the ashes he found
          in his violin’s belly?


How can we forget the death march
          in Mahler’s first symphony,
where he recreates a klezmer band,


          klezmer,
wiped out by the war,
          wiped from the memory,
like the wet cloth
          I use to comfort my mother
and ease her back
          into consciousness.





DOUG RUTLEDGE has a PhD in English from The University of Chicago and an MFA in creative writing from Ashland University. He is the editor of Ceremony and Text in the Renaissance and the author of The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away. His essay “Visibile Parlare: Ekphrastic Images in the Poetry of Angie Estes” was published in Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century. His poetry and reviews have appeared or will soon appear in Chautauqua, River Teeth, Rattle, <\i>Asheville Poetry Review, The Journal, Quiddity, Third Coast, Southwestern American Literature, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Common Ground Review, Jabberwock Review, and Lumina.

VOLUME 49.4

This poem was a runner-up for our 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York. Learn more about the contest here.