BALLET BELARUS

In the photograph
           her right foot has just lifted
  off the ground, as she pirouettes
            like a ballerina on the edge
     of the pit, her back is turned to the Einsatzgruppen
             soldier, I think to give the child
in her arms a last moment of
            protection. The bullet has already been
                       fired in this frozen moment, the shutter
       too slow to capture it, but the silence
  shatters, in a new millennium, in Brookline, in my
              study, and

I look up,

          startled.



May 8, 2001


All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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