Under the blood-clogged waters and the river weeds,
in a concrete channel that surrounds the camp,
his head weighs like a stone in leafy muck,
where a dead dog grins, where pearl-shelled snails
and a gypsy's amethyst rings were thrown.
His legs in heavy, studded boots float up
to ripple the water strider's path.
Known now to no one, like Mary Shelley's monster,
he finds a final resting place near ice-bound Alps,
near to the few who might have loved him.
His yellow bloated soggy skin barely covers
the veins and arteries of his face and scalp,
where long dark hair tangles with the worms.
Late on the day of American liberation,
the fingernails on his immense right hand keep
lengthening, and his watery eyes open into
everlasting sleeplessness, his thin black lips
now part to whisper what cannot be said,
some turn of phrase to give back breath one day
to the Dachau moors, that once
were known and sung and loved for poetry. can be heard.