Memorial

The bare unadorned concrete as grey as
despair, its sharp angular lines designed to
convey the bleakly incomprehensible number
of victims comprising the toll of hatred in
the impenetrable desolation of spirit that
impels humankind's inhumanity to others
that are different, despised and persecuted
the memorial is a place for grim introspection
where thoughts turn to wholesale atrocity
and the lives that were sacrificed to the deadly
scourge of anti-Semitism, a beacon of hope
that the memory of the Holocaust would
help people understand the dread horror
that civilized nations could inspire through
hatred and in its message would serve to
warn and forestall future human carnage.
The memorial inspired in those careless with
history and committed to merchandising
and aesthetics of appearance how fitting
it would be to use the stark canvass of loss
and bereavement to showcase a couture
collection of alluring garments in a public
relations campaign certain to gain notice
and public acclaim for the cleverness of
the juxtaposition, and after all, only those
whose ethnic group and religion were
sacrificed on the altar of the final solution
would be certain to respond; and so be it.