"His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap / Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light."
This horrifying image captures Hecht's unflinching portrayal of human cruelty during the Holocaust. The contrast between the sacred "Kindly Light" (a reference to John Henry Newman's hymn) and the physical agony of the victim exposes the tragic collapse of faith in the face of systematic violence. Hecht's diction—"blistered," "black sap"—turns the human body into a landscape of suffering, forcing the reader to confront atrocity through vivid, formalized precision.
"And the only sound for a while was the little click / Of ice as it broke in the mud under my feet."
Through the precise auditory image of "ice" breaking, Hecht conveys isolation and fragility. The sound becomes a metaphor for psychological fracture—each "click" echoing the breaking of innocence or calm. His formal restraint amplifies the quiet devastation of this moment.
"It is a scene of unmatched melancholy, / Weather of misery, cloud cover of distress."
In this passage, Hecht recasts the biblical narrative with psychological depth. The meteorological imagery externalizes inner torment—turning emotion into weather. The symmetry of "melancholy," "misery," and "distress" reveals Hecht's gift for rhythmically embodying emotional weight.
"Yolek, who had been taken from his mother / And from his father, was a boy who loved / The sun."
The tender simplicity of this description magnifies the horror of what follows. By portraying Yolek first as an ordinary child who "loved the sun," Hecht humanizes the unimaginable. The poem's circular sestina form reinforces the inescapability of memory and grief.
"That's when you have to really watch yourself."
This understated warning embodies Hecht's characteristic tension between irony and introspection. The voice of the poem teeters between sanity and surrender, inviting readers to question where strength ends and delusion begins.
"Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew."
Hecht's own reflection on poetry mirrors his technique—structured, secretive, and layered with moral complexity. His "witch's brew" metaphor suggests that poetry is not about revelation but about the disciplined conjuring of mystery.
