Of Genocide, or Merely Sound
       

How much saying nothing
gets you a starling or a jewel.
Gather enough starlings
in a box and you have a factory
of genocide, or merely sound
unraveling like a wing.
Gather enough people
in boxes on a train
and you can watch a country
disappear into the husks of anise
seeds and the morning frost
just outside Poland or Germany.
I'm not allowed to speak
for people in boxes stacked
on boxes stacked on rails
because I have not been pierced
by stars or gas or hunger.
I belong to the pigeon
who darns the stray threads
of the last evening on earth
just above a soldier's helmet.
I belong to the silence of a pomegranate
just cut open, the red seeds
pebbling a white plate.
In other words, I am a suicide
rather than a murder,
a could confused for a cloud.
If allowed, I might say
this is how genocide begins.

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Copyright © 2012 Roger Reeves All rights reserved
from Jubilat
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission