http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blbelzec1.

This photo
Not one renowned
Not one
Of haunted eyes
Sunken into the depths of abandon
With arms crossed
In desperate modesty
Over shriveled bosoms
Or one
With graves of shame
Heaped with frozen faces
Whose mouths gape in horror
And flailed limbs tangle
With their emaciated brethren
No not one

Etched into our indignation
Just one
Book bond
Forgotten
This photo-syntheses shades of gray
This woman
About to be executed
For us to ponder
Before the snow ran red with her blood
Gawkers to her fright
Seers of the trapped rabbit
Her hunters surrounding her
Before the kill
No not one

Etched into our imagination
Beyond
The tuning of the page
But I
But I hear this one
This insignificant woman
Weep
With an earsplitting cry
Of incredulity
Reverberating through the annuals
Of man’s injustice
Administered on our brothers
Time and time. . . once again
This one’s cry

Sounded
In the shattering glass
Of a Baptist Church on 16th Street
It whipped
Through the cold winds of Kosevo
It murmured
Lapping
Over the bloated bodies
That damned the rivers of Rwanda
It begged
Standing over the women
veiled for death
In the playing field of Afghanistan
It screamed
Deafening the blasts in Tel Aviv
This one’s cry

This one’s cry
Whispered
Of one final choice
Singing freedom
Into the ears
Of those who leapt from the Towers
This plain woman
Executed
Lost in history
Save one time-capsule photo
to our atrocities
I think
I think
She cries
Continues to weep at the side
Of our victims
Unwillingly left at Hell’s gate
Today
…and
Tomorrow

jeanne rene 11/03