LEST WE FORGET

            They were in hundreds, thousands, eventually millions,

             the wretched souls amassed

             in long killer carriages.

             They were in hundreds, thousands, eventually millions,

             taken afar, leaving behind them

             only long trails of dense black smoke,

             or rather empty places, dehumanized,

             places inhabited by absolute absence

             where the Absolute was absent.

             They were in hundreds, thousands, eventually millions,

             the men, women and children

             one fate for all, one fatal only goal.

             And they arrived and did not see

             nor light nor a way out,

             but only their own end.

             They were in hundreds, thousands, eventually millions,

             and the last things they remembered

             was a dense black smoke,

             a despair that screamed in despair.

             Today the memory remains

             of hundreds, thousands, eventually millions,

             a memory which few – or is it many?

             would just eradicate;

             today’s  a faded image

             humanity sans feeling,

             utterly degenerate!

                  

             Patrick Sammut

             (Translation by Alfred Palma)