Knowledge And Power
If only we’d known, they said
when the inmates of Belsen
were first seen
in their
deliberately
ill-fitting
striped pyjamas
dying from starvation,
dying from torture
dying from cold,
dying from illness,
dying
dying
dying.
If only we’d known, they said
when the extermination camps
were discovered,
the gas chambers,
the slave labour camps
where inmates were
killed
by over-work,
killed
by malnutrition
killed
by disease.
Exterminated.
If only we had known, they said,
there would have been no appeasement,
no ‘peace in our time’ self-protection,
no treaties for self-preservation,
no deals done in self-defence.
With the knowledge
intervention would have happened
genocide been prevented
if only we’d known.
Well this time we knew.
This time
we knew from the beginning.
This time
we knew from before the beginning,
from long before the beginning
about the intimidation,
the arbitrary arrests,
homes demolished,
the camps filled
with innocents
left to die
from starvation,
illness or cold
or killed by torture.
Citizens bombed to death.
Nothing left but rubble.
No one left in the rubble.
And so we acted
to send arms
the perpetrators.
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