Tuesday, February 04, 2014

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)