Nandor Glid’s sculpture at Dachau
a moat
ten-feet wide
water-filled
a slope of loose
gravel for no
footing
more slope
covered by barbed wire
netting to catch
ankles like butterflies
floating southward
in their destiny
then the fence
rows of barbed wire
six inches apart
electrified
A man would splash,
then scramble in scratching
agony up the slope,
be ensnared in barbed
netting only to be entangled
and electrocuted in
strands of wire.
left to hang
in sinister angles
as warning when
grey dawn lit
the compound
the already skeletal
body rotting to mere
bone on which the state
fed
the sculpture’s seven bodies caught
in the wire
one suspended escapee
twisted into a swastika