And the violins

Author: Meach
Word Count: 254
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We lived our lives so free
By the rules of the Romany
If gladly I feed my friend today
Tomorrow he will feed me
We learned of the world
From the songs of the fire
While war around us raging
Made our camps by the riverside
And tuned our souls to the season’s changing

And we played our violins,
While time stood still on the road to heaven,
We knew our turn would come one day
When the violins
Stopped playing

A gypsy summer is worth many winters
But for all I saw
I would trade a million snow filled skies
For the summer of forty four
Lady luck never comes when you want her
Only when you turn away
Soon we danced to the rhythm of cattle trains
And the maladies of Mengele

And we played our violins,
While time stood still on the road to heaven,
We knew our turn would come one day
When the violins
Stopped playing

By the wages of the whip we lived with terror
For the sins of birth we slaved
While the sons of Judah
Walked the road to heaven
We dug the ditches
And filled the graves
Every hour of every day
As we worked
We all were praying
Still a million gypsies died
When the violins stopped playing

And we played our violins,
While time stood still on the road to heaven,
We knew our turn would come one day
When the violins
Stopped playing

And we knew our turn would one day come

And the violins

This is a song/poem based on a book by Alexander Ramati which tells, in horrific detail, the story of the gypsy holocaust during the second world war.
The book, which I have read several times, always fills me with an immense sense of loss, sadness and frustration that one only has to turn on the news, today, or tomorrow or in ten years time to realise that we have learned nothing.

The reference in the song to Time standing still on the road to heaven refers to a clock on the tower of the gate at one of the camps which apparently never moved.

This another of my older songs

And the violins belongs to the following groups:

All Things Poetic, Prose, Philosophical. and Writers' Market

Globalphotos, 5 months ago

Wow….... powerful and emotive, great work !
Meach, 5 months ago

Many thanks
wdavies285, 5 months ago

fantastic power in these words meach, brilliant, o by the way WE WON what happened last week o WE WON, the english then i think
SkyFox, 5 months ago

Full of emotion, lovely…
Meach, 5 months ago

Thanks both
LocoCow, 5 months ago

Play on meach… Love that Chorus section I can just hear the strings….
Sande Elkins, 5 months ago

So moving, Meach….if you haven’t already, you should put your songs together in a book.
sally-ann rawl..., 5 months ago

wow!! there isnt any other way to describe it
you have a huge amount of talent
i loved it
Jodi Tweed, 5 months ago

nice read darl.
Sean Farragher, 5 months ago

fantastic
cdwork, 5 months ago

Superb, emotive, writing
TrEaSuReDiMaGeS, 5 months ago

Outstanding and Moving David!!! :-) You are so very talented!!! ....Well done
Meach, 5 months ago

Many thanks to all of you
Leon Walker, 4 months ago

What a fantastic tribute and so well crafted. Hopefully there will be a song some day!
Meach, 4 months ago

Thanks Leon – the more songs and stories there are of the holocaust the better – we have to learn from them
Tambala, 24 days ago

This is beautiful – and so painful. Some of my family never left Auschwitz and I’ve been aware of the horrors of intolerance since I was little.
And yes, still people choose not to learn – but the more we refuse to bury the awfulness and continue to remind – the more hope there is for change
Meach in reply to Tambala’s comment, 24 days ago

Thanks Tina – all we can do is keep the memories alive and hope that future generations will learn from them.