Two Photographs by Chim, 1945

    Blind Armless Boy Learning to
    Read With His Lips

    The question--Why?--is not his. He
    wants to recognize something as clear
    as the words of the world thudding
    or ringing in his ears. To etch the darkness
    with meaning, depth, and shape
    like a well replenishing itself,
    day after day to forge a link in himself
    of that invisible substance only death
    or madness can break, connect to the chain
    of the world he came from before
    he drowned and floated up into out of abyss.
    To cover the abyss with his dead eyelids.


    Death-Camp Child Drawing a
    Picture of Home

    You cannot imagine her eyes when she is asked
    to draw a picture of home.
                                              Ask a starving child,
    who has lived through unquestioning obedience,
    to give her only piece of bread away for no reason.

    The lines she draws are like wiry tangles of yarn
    without any direction. And when she finishes
    and turns to her questioner for help, to say,
                                                                      I want
    to tell you what you want to know though I don't
    understand what I think you mean, and I can never
    explain. Am I close? Will you tell me again what
    you want?
    And that is when Chim shot her,
    his camera freezing her there, lost,
    in the mazes of history.


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