HEILIGER TOD Comments

It's not an artistic photograph.
If it were, I wouldn't talk about it.
It's me next to my grandfather.
I look happy and so does he,
both of us smiling, together beneath
a bougainvillea. His happiness,
simple enough, is that of a grandfather
with an old felt hat just sitting there.
My happiness is holding
in my hand a box of Nazi soldiers
who either killed or were killed,
obeying an innocent decision.

Do toy soldiers still exist?
Nowadays, children the same age
as me in that photograph
tote guns and kill
just like that, with no intermediaries,
no pretending, no playful insinuations.
Perhaps they're right, I don't know.
They're surely more effective:
they kill instead of wanting to kill.
And we've always known that this arsenal
of dung called humanity is beautiful.

No one in the photograph has survived.
...
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