Photo After Pogrom

Arrangement by rage

of human rubble

the false-eternal statues of the slain

until they putrify.

Tossed on a pile of dead,

one woman,

her body hacked to utter beauty

oddly by murder,

attains the absolute smile

of dispossession:

the marble pause before the extinct haven

Death’s drear

erasure of fear,

the unassumed

composure

the purposeless peace

sealing the faces

of corpses—

Corpses are virgin.