Rounding Error
June 13 2008

This started with a radio documentary I listened to on CBC, called “Children of the Holocaust”, an award-winning piece produced by Karen Levine and narrated by Timothy Findley. In it, he quotes the numbers I mention in the poem; which got me wondering ...


Collateral damage can’t be helped
in modern war
— nervous pilots, with hair–trigger fingers,
friendly fire,
settling scores.

Civil wars are worse,
brother against brother
civilians held hostage to blood.
Where famine takes the children first,
and disease comes quickly after.

The thing about genocide
is how efficient it is;
orderly queues,
industrial ovens,
cattle-cars
pulling-in on time.
I read that 1 million children died
maybe 1.3,
murdered by Nazis.
300,000 lives
as rounding error.
In Rwanda
they were burnt, in a church, alive.
I picture people down on their knees
calling-out to their Lord for relief;
who must have been pre-occupied, just then.
Cyclon-B is heavier than air,
so they clawed over bodies to breathe
— emaciated corpses
piled-up as high as the ceiling.
While in fire, the smoke tends to rise.
So they died sucking air on the floor;
mercifully dead of smoke
before the flames spread,
before the smell of burning flesh.

Sometimes, war takes a rest,
but despots still kill with neglect
— mass starvation,
refugees festering in squatters’ camps.
While the world watches and frets
apparently unable to act.

Back then, they chose to be passive
and millions died.
Now, we take a stand
then ring our hands, and sigh.
We proclaim the end of genocide,
condemn crimes against humanity,
strike conferences and sanctions.

In this brave new millennium;
too much like the last one.