The Twentieth Century in Photographs

Different faces, formats all the same:
A profile set beside a frontal view
And nothing else included in the frame
Save, at the bottom, for a coded row

Of numbers dashes letters that replaces
A name best left un-said by those who knew it.
Two aspects of one face there, not two faces.
Behind each is a blank wall, we intuit,

More like an edge each one could be tipped over,

Once photographed. Impossible to read
These inex-pressive faces and recover
The thoughts of those who have been so long dead,

Who died, in fact, before the photographer
Had time to fix them in his clear solu-tion.
Although their eyes meet ours now, we are
Still not there yet: no stay of execution.