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The Last Pediatrician in Syria
Hunger Camp at Jaslo
by Wislawa Szymborska
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don't know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."
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"All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they." ~Rudyard Kipling
"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than in the name of rebellion." ~C.P. Snow
"The world is too dangerous to live in-- not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen." ~Albert Einstein
"Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building." ~Philip Gourevitch
"I graduated from a special school. Four years I spent there... all my days were nights. Everything that was near and dear to me they took. There is only one thing worse than Auschwitz itself, and that is if the world forgets there was such a place." ~Henry Appel, survivor
"Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren't born." ~Ervin Staub
Preemptive Love
Lit Terms 2
5 years ago
