Meaning of Genocide
Must a word’s definition stay fixed now
Forever? Having stood at Arrivals
And Selection, the railhead that appals,
As the significance of Birkenau
Presses home in its desolate extent,
The dreadful power of words misused exposed.
But who decides a definition’s closed,
Or meaning is particularly absent?
Circumstance must make a pedant relent
Surely? How many thousands dying and dead
Before the word is allowed to be said?
Is it qualified through stated intent?
Either by gas chambers or bombs,
Genocides are as vicious as pogroms.
D. A.