Flossenburg

I have climbed out of the depths
where human ash and soil
comprise a pyramidal mound
covered by the green of life.

Here women, men, and children
quarried stone in captive labor
under a sniper's constant guard…
the barbed wire of confinement
still runs through these mountains
and conifer forests…
how wrong it seems to revel
in the brazen beauty of this place!

Yet even here, even now,
redemption's signs abound
in the cross and flowers
where Bonhoeffer hung,
in the sanctuary walls and floor
of watchtower rock and brick,
in the quiet chill of the early morning air…
resurrection cries out from the ground.

Joel Kurz is a Lutheran minister and author living in Forsyth, Missouri. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung on April 9, 1945, at Flossenbürg concentration camp for his resistance to the Nazis.