I saw a book (in the children’s section of the library) based on this, and was so upset by it that I wrote a poem about it – what I sometimes do when I can’t deal with something any other way.
It may be all right from an educational standpoint, but it rubs me the wrong way. I wrote:
Man, Unwinged
There is an artist in Europe,
this is true, and therein
lies the horror,
who uses a human body, deceased,
with all the paperwork no doubt
completed, signatures notarized,
forms correctly filled in,
every i dotted and t crossed,
and with it creates art.
The SS colonel had a lampshade
made of human skin
stretched on a frame,
no doubt it cast a mellow light,
soothing for reading of an evening,
for counting up the totals of the men,
women and children sent to the
crematorium that day.
He flays the body,
and injects plastic into the muscles,
thus displaying his own ingenuity
as well as the creator‘s.
You may see the human figure,
as if striding,
one hand that never will grasp again
outstretched as if to grasp,
muscles spread like wings,
like feathers, attached at the insertion
only.
The red of muscles preserved, the blue of veins,
the symmetry and splendor of the human form.
And the parted lips,
the blank glass-eyeball stare,
the fled spirit.
