The 32nd Death
In Memory of Liviu Librescu
Holocaust Survivor


Liviu stood in the doorframe
saved light from screams. We
were dead in rows, he said, as
he blocked passage. Light could
not order the remains or help
life restore blank screens
of laptop computers unlocked
with the details of lives now lost.

Electrons stopped. Hearts were
struck down by Glock and hands
that could not revive splendor
when the loss of paradise resolute
in the daily mad comics of infamy.

Nothing escaped the gray holes
in the matrix that unraveled
when DNA was set end to end.
Is there a lost flaw in all of us?

Murder is a consequence of
empty rooms and no voice.
He cannot be forgiven. We
are lost in the mirrors too.
We set the laws that let
him to empty so much rage.


2.

32 died in a bare world.
Life blasted and cut open
revealed viscera to thirty two
births and another last scream.

What if last year he had drowned
alone in the fist of the ocean
as the first death not the 33rd?
What happened next had no plan.


3.

There is too early a death; any
murder’s rides games,
broken promise that we soon forget.

Fear is a natural loss.
We watch over the hands
of the dead as they hang
from the window sill
and jump from Hellespont, so
help them, they did not die.

Nothing remains but scars
and scattered notepaper filled
with German and French
verbs. The Professor conjugated
softly the verbs “I will die today,
as it is a good day to die,” and
"I am old and you, younger."
He spoke in the language
of physics and mathematics.

Heroes walk ancient roads.
Home stands at the back door.
We witnessed drawn guns.
He rushed out of the echo
of 9 mm Glock and leapt
from sanctuary to peril.

I believe Liviu will be redeemed.
The undertow rushes like
dangerous storms out of abyss.
We have not found one answer
for cruelty and insanity lived
lost on the porch watching
daylights fall away -- a glacier
melting too fast every day, the
loss can be tracked without
watching news repeat ten thousand
times every second in voices without
character and that longing breeds
death as great rivers turn inside out.