--- G R E G O R Y   D J A N I K I A N

      	Tell the officials assigned this task that they must put
       	into execution our real intent, without being afraid of responsibility. 
		
  	--Talaat Bey, Turkish Minister of the Interior, September 9, 1915 



If in some afterlife you could meet up 
with the slaughterers, the dispensers of injustice, 
the torturers who have cut, broken, 
punished the body to make it sing
its hideous ungodly music,

If you could see them again 
beguiling a roomful of their disciples
while in some catacomb, others 
are confessing the last of their sins,

If you could stand before them
bearing the authoritative
scrolls of accusation
 
If you had the power to do unto them
without appeal or reprisal

Would you let it happen then, 
would you sign the decrees, seal
the letters of transportation 
to parts unknown,

Would you say let us extinguish
and let us do it slowly,
without anesthetic or balm 
in the name of the fathers and the sons
and all the severed holy alliances,

And would you be the one
to pick up the first knife
and begin to do the work it must do?