Happening onto the Anne Frank Garden I see a yellow-walled buildingback a rectangle of blue sky mirrored in a window an undefined dark stain a yellowed bedcover drooping from a second window utility boxes on the roof of the Pompidou Center a tunneled trellis in the form of a semi-ellipse climbing plants on the walls behind 1 concrete and 2 wooden benches I finish my pain d’olives on one of them to the right on an upper floor of the Musée de la Poupée a woman is painting a yellow windowframe the buildings are all yellow as is the back facade of the Hotel de Saint-Aignan many of whose occupants were deported in the same circumstances as was Anne Frank this building now houses the Museum of Jewish Art and History from which I have just come after viewing an exhibition of paintings by Félix Nussbaum who took the last train from Belgium to Auschwitz a graft of the chestnut tree that Anne Frank could see through the window of her hiding-place in Amsterdam grows next to the entrance to this garden its leaves are yellow children play in another garden just behind next to the graft of Anne Frank’s chestnut tree a rag-piled figure lies apparently sleeping across from this figure sits another in an attitude of frozen prayer
a group of men come, point, talk, leave
