It opened with glissandi, repeated sweeps of fingers across

Keys, but like waves seen from a distance, making their way

Along the shore, the machine guns that ripped through the village

Can no longer be heard. Even the church bell lies on the floor of the

Sanctuary, tongue melted to the cheek of its mouth like the fingers

Of Thomas pressing the holes in Christ’s side in order to

Believe. Batter-batter, batter-batter, we’d all start to chatter

When someone on the other team got up to bat. The deep red dye

Made from wild madder, when eaten, turned the bones

Of animals red, the claws and beaks of birds, too, and cloth dyed

With madder was used to wrap Egyptian mummies. By candlelight

In the Villa des Brillants, Rodin loved in the evenings to linger

With his fragments of ancient statues—hands, heads, fingers,

Arms, and feet—because they held some trace of a former

Life. He cast small nude female bodies in white clay and placed them

In antique terracotta pots: we still watch them struggle to climb out

Of the past. Before they were taken out to be executed, the women held

In Ravensbrück put on lipstick, pinched their cheeks, and arranged

Each other’s hair. The women and children of Oradour-sur-Glane

Tried to escape from the village church after the soldiers shut

The doors, set fire to the building, and began to shoot. Only one

Woman escaped, broke glass and climbed out of the window behind

And above the altar, the stone altar now pitted by the rounded heads

Of bullets, niches into which you can place the tip of your forefinger as if

You were waiting at a counter, in quiet light, about to be fingerprinted.