A text not taken from a war-crimes trial,
But the good doctor's log-"after a while
It
stopped." The time was 1942,
A prison camp whose horrors could outdo
Belsen, wi th new experiments each day.
For example, two men were stripped naked
In
a courtyard. Inside, behind windows,
The officers could watch, and set down notes
As they observed the men begin to freeze,
Who knew how soon. Thirty below zero.
"Toward the end, their agony was so great,
They tore each other's flesh with fingernails."
I know nothing. To witness this outrage
Changed nothing for these men. No one was saved.
My only hope, my only prayer for them
Is that it end, that their agony end,
As it did, but not soon. Their murderers
Would live on, in a Tokyo suburb
Where they would treat patients and tend gardens
With painstaking care and die in their beds.
Time would pass. The long century would close
That began with Apollinaire's great
Zone,
And ended, where, with
FloUJ Chart,
or
Garbage,
AnLidst our canon wars, once all the rage.
Auschwi tz and Hiroshima were the end
Of art, we said, thinking they should have been.
