MONSTER’S QUARTERS

In the threshold of rooms beds bedrooms
the living space of children
sleep and the water and swamps
garbage dumps world leaders killers fiction
a materialist would say
a monster is monstrous as a product
of such conditions
but so are children
so are the rest of us
so are alligators
and what holy dive
would treat us worse?

Impossibility

“What’s the use of looking for mitigating circumstances… ?” asks Berthe Mwanankabandi, whose parents and eleven siblings were murdered. “What can you mitigate? The number of victims? The methods of hacking? The killers’ laughter? Delivering justice would mean killing the killers. But that would be like another genocide… Killing or punishing the guilty in some suitable way: impossible. Pardoning them: unthinkable. Being just is inhuman.”

- Living With the Enemy