Oradour sur Glane, The Martyred Town. (Revised Version).

The burnt out buildings and vehicles
Of Oradour sur Glane
Have rotted on the rich green sward
Of Haute - Vienne
Like an unhealed wound
For much of my lifetime.
These piteous relics of a long gone epoch
Are a constant reminder of the horrors of conflict,
More powerful than any thick grained photograph
Placed high on a shelf
By a grieving parent.

Flickering images of starving prisoners
Violently gripping barbed wire fences
As they stare out at freedom
Lose potency as the years pass by,
But these shattered walls and caved in roofs
Are defiantly Now, and forever with us.

Nearly all of the townsfolk were butchered here,
Crammed into barns like pigs for slaughter,
Burnt alive in the ancient church,
Or shot as they tried to evade the squads
Of fanatical Third Reich soldiers.
These stones, these rusting hulks of cars,
These bombed out shells of well loved houses,
Are like scarred megaliths signalling anger
Against an uncomprehending world.

These are the only monuments that make any sense here;
Words are too fragile to describe such crimes,
And photographs are simply a blur of shadows
Dissolving gradually into nothing.
These ruins are raw, jagged and hard,
If we get too close we can tear our skin on them,
Rip our civilized flesh to the bone.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 22nd. 2015.  

I was too deeply affected to write about the recent events in Paris, my second city, but when a friend put a picture of the burnt out rusting cars left over from the 1944 massacre at Oradour sur Glane onto Facebook I just had to respond with a poem. I hope it speaks for all victims of atrocities, whoever they are, whatever part of the world they live in.