The Butterfly
The poem reminds me of how beautiful humanity can be even in the darkest of times. Paval wrote this poem while he was watching his friends and family be taken away from him. He dreamed of yellow butterflies and dandelions in the disturbingly horrifying atmosphere of a Nazi ghetto. Although the poem ends in a foreboding tone, it inspires me that Paval was able to still dream, to still create humbling, humane beauty while being surrounded by such desolation.
Paval died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944, along with my grandfather's mother, father, and brother. But his words, and his inspiration, live on through his lyrical interplay of diction and syntax. It reminds us all that no matter how dark the future may seem, or how horrifying the actions of today are, we as humans have the power to bring light by creating beauty - with words, art, dance, song, speeches, policy, science, and math. In a time when our country faces a strong divide in the weeks before the Presidential Election, and when our world faces much violence, we all must remember that we too can be like Paval. We too can create beauty in the dark.
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| The Butterfly Project at the Holocaust Museum Houston collects handmade butterflies to remember the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. |
- The last, the very last,
- So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
- Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
- against a white stone. . . .
- Such, such a yellow
- Is carried lightly 'way up high.
- It went away I'm sure because it wished to
- kiss the world good-bye.
- For seven weeks I've lived in here,
- Penned up inside this ghetto.
- But I have found what I love here.
- The dandelions call to me
- And the white chestnut branches in the court.
- Only I never saw another butterfly.
- That butterfly was the last one.
- Butterflies don't live in here,
- in the ghetto.
The poem reminds me of how beautiful humanity can be even in the darkest of times. Paval wrote this poem while he was watching his friends and family be taken away from him. He dreamed of yellow butterflies and dandelions in the disturbingly horrifying atmosphere of a Nazi ghetto. Although the poem ends in a foreboding tone, it inspires me that Paval was able to still dream, to still create humbling, humane beauty while being surrounded by such desolation.
Paval died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944, along with my grandfather's mother, father, and brother. But his words, and his inspiration, live on through his lyrical interplay of diction and syntax. It reminds us all that no matter how dark the future may seem, or how horrifying the actions of today are, we as humans have the power to bring light by creating beauty - with words, art, dance, song, speeches, policy, science, and math. In a time when our country faces a strong divide in the weeks before the Presidential Election, and when our world faces much violence, we all must remember that we too can be like Paval. We too can create beauty in the dark.
