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| "President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country's bloody war on narcotics and escalating his rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust." —The New York Times, September 30, 2016 |
From Germany's ashes in 1945 we witnessed
A phoenix struggling to rise.
One wing whipped up the cinders as
The other remained rooted in the fires.
Finally, the peacock's shining plumage
Spread its light against a grey Northern sky.
And now, seven decades later and
Six thousand miles from Europe's bloodlands
Hitler's yardstick of death continues to
Measure our species' resolve
On self-extinction.
George Salamon taught German literature and culture at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter on a business journal and senior editor on a defense journal. For he past five years he has written from St. Louis, MO.