Day 308

A father is bouncing his two little boys
on the canvas dome of the tent
they’re living in.  The children —
toddlers — giggle, squeal.  It’s summer.
The father laughs too.  His eyes shine,
his words to the boys are full of joy.
What do they know of devastation?
For the moment, no planes.  No bombs.
He bounces his sons as though
they were on a bed, a couch, the way
children are bounced by their parents.
The children delight in it the way
children delight.  What the father
knows, what he fears, he is not
revealing.  Now and then
he looks away from them
at the sky, that, for
the moment, is only blue.

Day 307

(Hind, once again)

In the photograph
she is wearing a black graduation cap
outlined in gold.  It sits
at a little angle, as though
she had been running
just before someone took
the picture, the hat not made
to fit squarely on her small head,
her dark curls.  Her eyes shine,
she is proud (you can tell) 
to have finished kindergarten!
So proud to have learned
to read, to write her name,
other words.  When
was this taken?  In June?
Seven months before her death
by bombing in a car on a road
the ambulance couldn’t get to,
since it, too, had been bombed?
You can tell from the photograph
how bright she was.  How vibrant,
how full of mischief.  How she would use
everything she had learned, those last
hours, to try to keep herself alive.

Day 306

The children had been walking to school.
Their backpacks.  Their little jackets.
Their shoes still covered with yesterday’s dust.
The books in their backpacks they are learning
to read.  The pencils.  The colored pens.
The children were brothers.  One older, one younger.
Their mother had stood outside the tent,
waving goodbye.  They were only
walking down the road.  They were only
going to school.  The boys
were always together, their mother would say
A year apart, but almost like twins.
Even their names were similar.
Does she have to separate them now
in death?  Couldn’t they lie
in a single grave?

Day 305

I saw a girl split in two.
I saw an old man without legs.
I saw a three year old
sit watching her mother die.
I saw a shattered bird, a crushed dog,
a boy without a head.
All these things I saw with my eyes.
I saw the sun set
on a field I could not name.
I saw what had been a city
crumble and fall.  All these things
I tell you I saw — they live
within me.  They don’t
leave me alone.  They haunt 
my days. In my sleep
sometimes they come to me
and the girl is whole again 
and runs through the field, 
the old man races after her,
as though he were
young; the mother
of the little child stands,
takes her crying daughter
into her arms, whispers
I’m here, I’m here; the boy
turns his head toward them
and speaks, the dog
runs toward them, almost
dancing.  The bird soars overhead,
over the shining roofs of the city.  

Day 304

The doctor, asked why he didn’t evacuate
when the evacuation orders came,
said to the interviewer, “Do you think
I studied medicine and prepared myself
for this work for fourteen years
so I could only save my own life
and abandon the patients 
I prepared myself to serve?”  He was killed
the next day.  All those years of study —
the diseases he’d learned
to recognize, the treatments
he’d developed, the ways he’d evolved
to speak to his patients, the triumphs,
the losses, the discussions with colleagues
over this or that way of proceeding
with this or that case — all of that,
gone.  His body under the rubble.
Gone his hands, that had performed
all those surgeries.  Gone his indignation.
His devotion, his doubt, his sleeplessness. His love.

Day 303

(from a photograph)

The child is being carried out of the shelter —
that had been a school — by a young man.
A girl — maybe seven? — one arm
wrapped in a ribbon of gauze
the young man is still
holding the other end of, as though
he had been tending to her and then
had to run quickly.  Precipitously.
The arm wrapped in gauze
hangs from the girl’s
shoulder; her other arm
laid strangely across her chest, as though
she can’t move it on her own.
A blank look on her face.  Her pink
little t-shirt, her dark red
pants.  Brown socks.  I think of her
putting them on in the morning.
Someone brushing her thick curly hair.
The noise, the stench, the lines
for the toilet, lines for bread.
Who is dead now and who still living?
Is the man her father?  Her brother?
A medical worker?  A stranger?
And where is he taking her?  And what
can they do for her?

Day 302

The child couldn’t believe
his house was ruined, kept telling his father
Take me, take me back to see it.
At last his father took him.
There was the house, or what
remained of it:  slabs of concrete,
pieces of cloth, here and there
something they thought they recognized.
The child looked at the ground.
Remembered his mother, remembered
his sister, remembered that there
was the place where he’d sat
with a friend, playing some game.
He was silent.  He looked.  Held
his father’s hand. Said at last
I wish you had never brought me back here.

Day 301

Where that dust is, there was a garden.
You used to pass it every morning
on your way to buy bread, milk.
Flowers and vegetables, lemons and oranges.
You remember the fragrance, the way
you would pause, stand at the fence,
know the season by what was blooming
and what was waiting to bloom,
what was fallow and what was green.
Jasmine.  Roses.  You knew
whose garden it was; at times
she was there, she’d go inside the house
for a bag and fill it with what was growing.
There’s always more, she would say.
The earth keeps giving. Today you looked
at the dust, tried to find a stem, a piece
of a root. Wondered what had become
of the fruit trees, the rose bush, the woman.
Tried to think of the life in the soil underneath:
insects and worms preparing another season,
Soil teeming with life under the desolate air.

Day 300

The children had been playing on an open field,
still unspoiled enough for their game.
They were playing football, their voices
jubilant when the ball reached
their makeshift goal, the cheers
of those who watched on the sidelines
raucous, spirited.  Then the drones.
Then the bombing.  Then everything
went dark.  Then smoke, then blood, then
pieces of clothing, pieces of flesh.
There was silence, then wailing.  Then
names were called out.  Then a few
faint voices, answering.  More silence.
Then a girl who had been standing
and cheering saw the ball — unfathomably
intact — rolling away.  Rolling.
Ran toward it, picked it up, 
held it close to her body 
as though it could have been
her brother.

Day 299

Do you say
you will obliterate us?
I tell you the soil is alive,
even when you cannot see
what grows there.
Do you say
we are less than a wind
blowing miles out to sea?  I say
soon the wind will hurl its defiance
onto the land and bear away
your plans, your wickedness.
Do you pretend our children
do not have names?  I tell you
their names will outlast
the cities you build,
the lies you invent.