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 unsaid 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 inexpressive 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 solution.
Although their eyes meet ours now, we are
Still not there yet: no stay of execution.