This is a snapshot of part of the memorial 'For United Georgia: Monument to the Heroes who Fell Fighting for the Territorial Integrity of Georgia", ერთიანი საქართველოსთვის: საქართველოს ერთიანობისთვის ბრძოლაში დაღუპულ გმირთა მემორიალი, ertiani sakartvelostvis: sakartvelos ertianobistvis brdzolashi daghup'ul gmirta memoriali - otherwise known as the Abkhazia War Memorial.
The carved letters spell out the names of the thousands of soldiers who lost their lives. I can't read them, but the cumulative effect of seeing them in their long lists down the marble walls, is moving and deeply sad. I hear that today's Times has printed lists of names of all those killed through the actions of Osama bin Laden who died yesterday. Billy Collins' poem about 9/11 similarly lists, alphabetically, the first names of some of the victims of the attack. This imposition of order, alphabetical, regularly rendered letters, contained on a memorial or the pages of a newspaper or in a poem, help me to feel safe whilst at the same time confronting the reality of losses on a massive scale. Nata finds the name of her friend. I've never met him and so it means nothing and yet, the locating of someone specific in the lists, makes sense of all of those individual clusters of letters.
I'm reminded of Anna Akhamatova, 'I should like to call you all by name, / but they have lost the lists'. I would like to call you all by name but still, in this place of sorrows, I'm unable to read.
