text mode CrossConnect previous next

Home
Issue Contents
Contributors
E-mail Us
   c o v e n a n t

--- 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?

© crossconnect, inc 1995-2006 |
published in association with the |
university of pennsylvania's kelly writers house |