He beat my sisters and me

© Copyright Pip Wilson, 2010

He beat my sisters and me,
thrashed us till the welts
raised up on our thighs like purple ropes.
He beat my sisters and me.

Sixty years have passed
since the perilous days of the war
and I didn't know what the Third Reich was.
And sixty years have passed.

And we had done no wrong --
but now I understand
why Father beat my sisters and me,
though we had done no wrong.

In Germany in '41
to be seven was no fun,
and often I wondered what I had done
in Germany in '41.

Is it more than sixty years?
Mein Gott, and so it is.
Yet I see Father with the fir tree rod --
Is it more than sixty years?

I still see his glistening eyes
and his cheek all smudged with tears.
Though fear and pain I remembered for years
I still see his glistening eyes.

My mother rolled out the dough.
She deliberately turned away,
took a rolling pin and loud as she could,
my mother rolled out the dough.

"This is what you'll get,"
said Father, "if you breathe a word
about the family hiding in the roof --
this is what you'll get."