Two hundred and three million

Two Hundred and three million

(the number of victims of genocide in the 20^th Century)

Two hundred and three million

And our tears are turned to ash,

Scattered by dry winds.

There was a time they laughed,

Looked at the sky,

Tasted music in the wind,

And touched with love.

There was a time their stumbling tongues

Learned speech; their stumbling legs

Learned to walk, run, hop, skip,

To dance … to dance …

Till all the dancing stopped,

The walls went up,

The blade came down,

The shots spun through the dark:

Humanity

Denied itself again.

Take up your tears,

Two hundred and three million

Have scarcely stirred the dust on barren graves,

The pitiless dust on barren, silent graves,

One drop for each is more than we can spare.

In a world gone mad with madness,

Who will dare

Name the unnameable,

Take up the mirror,

(The one that does not glow with rose-pink light,

Or Hollywood halos flashing)

To show our social garments of compassion

For the rude rags that deck our empty hearts.

Let the wind take up their cry.

Let the earth blench with shame to have covered such a burden.

Let the songbirds cease their songs.

Let the flowers hesitate to bloom

Let the angels of heaven stand in the places where we failed to.

Let there be light,

Remorseless light –

Blaze into our darkness

Till the excuses die upon our tongues.

“Any man’s death diminishes me”

We have hardened our hearts

Lest the knowledge break us.

We have turned away our faces

Lest we see they look like us.

We have clasped our hands behind our backs

Afraid of driving nails,

Afraid of life, afraid of human blood,

Afraid of being vulnerable like them.

I cannot pretend to walk

With the burning compassion of the angels.

It is easy not to care.

Two hundred and three million had no choice.

Two hundred and three million call my name.