For The Far Away Anonymous Injured And Dead Poem by Shalom Freedman

It happens every day
Yesterday it happened worse than most days
The planes bombed a bread line in Syria
What can one say about the screams the broken limbs the blood everywhere
The horror in the faces of the living and the dead?

It happens every day
We see it on the television or on our mobile devices
We sometimes get close- ups of the horror
We can read occasionally about one person or family
But mostly there are not enough journalists
And what do their anecdotes mean anyway?

These are human beings
Like me and you
And the worst conceivable horror happens to them
And it could happen to me or you-

And it does in fact happen every day
Perhaps the Islamic world most specializes in it
These days
But it is certainly not their exclusive privilege-
Christianity did not do bad at it
Marxism given its time did worse

But it is not ideology alone
The tribes in Rwanda tell us
Cambodia told us-

The worst possible thing
That can happen to human beings
Happens to some of us everyday-

It is not a sign of distinction
That we live on this earth
And act with such cruelty to our own and to others

It is not the holiest thing in the world to be human
In a world
Where everyday
There are these horrors-

Shame shame on us all
And Fear Fear also.