Like photographs of Dutch Schultz which show a slick haired, ordinary man with unmatched eyes, there is nothing evil in this face. Pol Pot is a bland, jowly, full-lipped man. Murder. Torture. Genocide. The big words leave no mark on this small human face. His photograph has first place on these walls, mosaicked with the snapshots of the dead. Looking into the eye of the camera their eyes focus down the well of terror -- a child, his upper lip already slashed; a man grinning madness; a woman, blank faced with one tear, clasps her infant. In the presence of full face or profile or candids of the stick-limbed forced to smile up from beds of torture, I move face to face. My eyes supersede the camera. Obsessed, I feel obligated to look one by one, as though by meeting each pair of eyes I might... But all I can do is make them into words. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VANQUISHED; ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL GRANT by FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS FOR THE FOURTH TIME by ROBERT RANKE GRAVES HERO AND LEANDER by CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE A MOTHER'S LOVE by JAMES MONTGOMERY THE WIND SUFFERS by LAURA RIDING |