Like one who brings an important letter to the counter after office
hours:
the counter is already closed.
Like
one who seeks to warn the city of an impending flood, but speaks
another
language. They do not understand him.
Like
a beggar who knocks for the fifth time at a door where he has four
times
been given something: the fifth time he is hungry.
Like
one whose blood flows from a wound and who awaits the doctor:
his
blood goes on flowing.
So
do we come forward and report that evil has been done us.
The
first time it was reported that our friends were butchered there was a cry of
horror.
Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and
there was
no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
When
evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”
When crimes begin to pile
up they become invisible. When sufferings become
endurable the cries are no
longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
From:
Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, ed. Carolyn
Forché, Norton,1993. Trans. John Willett.
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