There is inequality in death
between the victims; some
only names and numbers,
others gaze at us from pictures,
anchoring their fate longer
in our minds. After a faceless
Romani child or a Soviet
prisoner of war, when we see
the serious eyes of a Polish priest
looking directly at us, a middle-class
Dutch Jewish child, with his stuffed toy,
watching past us to something beyond,
are we not touched more,
are the latter not made more real,
do we not feel deeper the loss
of those who are images to us,
not just words and numbers?
Perhaps. Or perhaps the faceless
dead, in the totality of their
erasure, briefly disturb
us even more than those
who we can see before us -
in telling us how little
is left of these lives?
Even their images
turned to ash.
05.06.2021
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