Grass

Jeanette Rehahn - Fruition

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. 

Shovel them under and let me work— 

                                          I am the grass; I cover all. 

And pile them high at Gettysburg 

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 

Shovel them under and let me work. 

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: 

                                          What place is this? 

                                          Where are we now? 

                                          I am the grass. 

                                          Let me work.

Carl Sandburg

I recently watched the documentary "A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did", which is basically the story of two men whose fathers were prominent Nazis during WW2, and who were responsible for the death of the family of the man interviewing them. It's disturbing, as you can imagine, but the moment that moved me the most was one in which the three are standing at the site of a mass grave ( 3,000 people including the members of the interviewer's family). It's just a field of wild grass with a monument. There is no sign of what happened all those years ago. They stand by the field in silence, and the grass moves in the wind. I watched it sway, and those words came to my mind - "I am the grass; I cover all."  It strikes me that grass, a symbol of human frailty, should also be the thing that covers our dead. Frailty upon frailty. It's a bleak image in some ways, and yet, I find the grass so beautiful, so much a symbol to me of endurance, resistance, and vigor. Persistence! That's it. Life, human and otherwise, returning. "I'm the grass. Let me work."