End Times: Republished

END TIMES

Hold fire! Mukti’s rickety rickshaw
Holds its breath a moment, pauses in suspense,
Gasps, gulps, shudders and shambles one day more
Bent upon what uncertain comeuppance?

What deadly quagmires lurk around us
As faulty torches, barely flickering,
Leave us stalking fears, while dreams caress us
Beneath steel towers, looming, uncaring?

Surreptitious glances scan each shadow,
Meet only with mirrors too fogged to read
And whereof, pray, this breath? Above? Below?
Which blurred each image, then blindness decreed?

After the abandon of summertime
Comes winter’s burning breathtaking horror.
Bully boys preparing fresh pits of lime.
Hear them sniggering in the corridor,

~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~

“On April 4, 1945, soldiers from the U.S. Third Army freed a camp in the town of Ohrdruf, in central Germany. Tech. Sgt. Eugene Luciano later wrote about the experience:

‘Many prisoners laid in their bunks too weak to move, but raised their arms in thanks. Bodies were piled high on the ground; others were in pits covered with lime. There were rows of ditches filled with buried bodies with an occasional leg or arm protruding [sticking up] out of the ground. The stench was intolerable.’ ”

– The Free Library by Farlex.

Of course that kind of thing couldn’t happen these days could it?