If A Human Being Can Be Alive In One Second Poem by Shalom Freedman

If a human being can be alive at one second
And a second or perhaps many tormenting minutes or hours
later be dead
with a bullet in his brain or gas in his lungs or fire going all through his body
Then I too can be suddenly never breathing and never conscious again forever-
I too can be an incident and accident
Here one second not here another-

I too could be like one of those millions the Nazis murdered in just this way
Or one of the millions threatened by terror or nuclear night
One of those millions who through the centuries were just killed in the most cruel and violent ways simply because they were Jews
Or one of those who actually knew the burns and the radiation and the heat storms and the bleeding inside and out
And are threatened now simply because they are other than their enemies
It has happened to others and could happen to me and mine
To any and all of us-
How I pray to God no great and evil disaster will come to us again-