A day like this, the sun and clouds,
resplendent—all a child could ask for—
so gloriously there, it crowds
my thoughts of childhood out of doors.
 
I learned later, about that year:
war had been coming to a close;
Auschwitz, other camps appear— 
stains darken what a young boy knows.
                        

No playacting here.
We all watched as helpless
viewers must, a doctor
pump you full of air
all for naught, breathless
the result. To see
babies die—the truth
vivid, then the fact,
hands the helm to us,
stunned, nowhere to steer,
drama too intense:
a baby’s death—so small,
and yet immense.

(The News Hour 1/21/22)

There is a point beyond where thought will go,
the children lined up for a photograph,
the knowledge given to us of a freeze
we cannot see but must imagine. Cold,
its symptoms, snow, the helpless shivering
the shutter’s snap refuses us. Their eyes
are all we have to learn of our forgetting.
We cannot feel what they are feeling then,
or now, because our lives must lead us through
the thickets of the day, and the human mind
no matter what we do, will not stay.
Helplessness provides us with excuse:
we are not gods; we cannot be where they
will shiver through the nights and endless days.
And these are just a few—there are so many—
everywhere we care to look; and those—
and just as many—who have cast them out.
Helpless, to cast a penny in the pot
to help a child across the globe that we—
because we have to shovel our way out—
have now forgotten. Seeing us at work,
angels in the snow look up and smile.