Day 340

An old man rocks back and forth.
He is sitting on what were
the steps to his house,
the house he lived in as a boy,
the house where his children lived,
the house where, years ago, his wife died.
He sits, his hand on his gray cat
who, unfathomably, has survived
the bombing his grown sons
and grandchildren did not.
The cat looks at him, understands
the man has no words for her,
that he needs her, that he 
will do what he can to find
food for her, a place
for both of them to sleep.

Day 339

Another child dies of starvation.
Her body has eaten itself: first
the muscles, then the inner organs.
Her body has been eaten by cruelty,
by disregard.  By foul water,
fetid air, ravaged soil, spoiled meat,
moldy vegetables. Her body
that was four years into this world —
her body that walked, ran, played,
laughed, held and was held —
her body has faded, dissolved, retreated
into darkness, blankness, emptiness.
Her small body has been sucked into nothing.
Nothing is her body now.  Her body of nothing.
Her name of nothing.  Her voice of nothing.
Her mother’s arms cradling nothing.
Her father’s breath warming nothing.
Her sister’s arm, stretched around her
through so many nights, is stretched
around nothing. 

Day 338

A woman is cleaning her house
with its fallen walls, its shattered windows.
Somehow she has found a mop, a broom, 
a bucket of water that had been used
to clean something else.  This
is still our home, she says
to her children, this is 
what we have.  The two children
sit cross-legged on a concrete slab
that had once divided indoors from outdoors,
sweetness from terror.
Their mother hands each child
a rag.  Wipe whatever you see,
she tells them; this
belongs to us.  As long as it’s here,
as long as we’re here — minutes?
hours? years? — it belongs to us.

Day 337

In the street filled with sewage,
children are taking showers in the rain.  
They take off their shirts, run their fingers
through each other’s hair.
You can hear their laughter.
How we want to be washed clean, I
think. How we long to step out
into our lives over and over
as though we could make ourselves freshly,
as though we could begin again
whatever we need to begin.
The rain is always new; the same rain
has never fallen before
on this ruined ground, on these streets
filled with rot, with pus,
with the stench of loss.
When the children
open their mouths, they catch
raindrops that fall
from elsewhere, that have not
been absorbed yet into this horror.

Day 336

Which of us can know
whether this day will be our last?
The eight year old boy
is talking to the reporter
about wanting to be able to eat,
drink water, play with his friends,
go to school.  Like it was
before, he tells her; but before
is a long time ago, a long time away,
a place he can go to now
only in longing.  I listen
to his small, soft voice
on the radio, recorded
yesterday, and ask myself
if he is still alive today.
He had been talking
about the sky, filled with drones
but also with birds.  He wants to live
like the birds, he said, the sky
is not crowded with sewage and death 
like the ground, the streets.

Day 335

The children go walking through charred fields.
Their legs are thin, they tire more quickly
than they did only months ago.  They are remembering
when there were strawberries, watermelons,
zucchini.  They speak about them as though
they were lost friends:  the texture, the sweetness,
the smell of the house with zucchini roasting in oil
and garlic.  Can’t you almost taste it? one
of them asks the others; and the others
nod, lick their lips, look out
over the ravaged grasses, blackened earth,
and see, for a moment, fields of abundant red and green.

Day 334

Three children who were vaccinated
against polio yesterday were killed
this morning, their house bombed
a few hundred meters from Abubaker’s.
I am thinking now of the rain,
about the children playing outside 
in the rain:  warm rain, summer rain,
that smell of ozone in the air.  Fetid air,
saturated with death; and still the children
splashed in the puddles, opened their mouths
to catch the drops, torrents of rain
pouring down, their hair wet, their clothes wet.
Rain falling as it has always fallen,
washing everything clean, even the little
fallen corpses where antibodies had only begun
to multiply in blood that is spilling.

Day 333

She saw a boy without a head.
She saw a dog eating the corpse
of another dog.  She saw
tents bombed, collapsed.
Cans of food rolling aimlessly
on the ground.  She heard
the crying of men, the wailing
of infants, the sirens
of ambulances suddenly silenced.
The children standing in line
at a hospital, their arms
so thin, their ribs clearly outlined 
under their shirts.  Keep us alive
another month, another day,
another hour, their eyes
said, their voices
too weak from hunger to be heard.

Day 332

A man kneels in the rubble of his house,
searching for the remains of his children.
Anything — a sock, a piece of a t-shirt.
A hand.  A leg.  He kneels, weeping,
maybe praying.  Afraid of what he might find,
afraid he will find nothing.  Planes overhead.
Late summer.  The sky, already darkened,
darkening earlier.  He kneels, sorts 
through fallen concrete, shreds of a pillow,
a curtain, rung of a chair.  Is it enough
that he has lost everything?  That he can find
nothing he’s looking for?  A soldier, turning
what had been the corner of the street,
wantonly shoots him.  Stands 
casually, one hand
in a pocket, smoking a cigarette now,
watching blood stain the man’s shirt,
the concrete, the rubble
he had been kneeling in.

Day 331

He was a farmer, he had an orchard.
He grew figs, he grew plums and apricots.
He had chickens.  He had goats.  Every morning
he stepped out of his house, scattered seed
for the chickens, put scraps from his family’s meals
into troughs for the goats.  Other food as well.
The goats followed him through the orchard.
They knew him, they rubbed their long noses
against his hands.  He loved the softness
of their eyes.  He named them,  he named
the chickens.  There was sun.  There was water.
The figs ripened, the plums and apricots.
His children played with the goats.  They held
the chickens.  The smallest one buried her face
in their feathers.  He sold the figs.  He sold
the plums, the apricots, the eggs.  He made cheese
from the goats’ milk, tended their kids.
It’s all gone now, even the children, even the goat
who followed him, once, into the house
and he laughed, he held the goat’s head
in his hands, looked into her eyes.  It’s all gone,
even the fruit, even the smallest child
and the feathers.  Only the man survives
and looks at the charred trees, the ruined soil
he had touched with his hands every day
for years.  Nothing remains but a few scattered seeds.
He makes some shallow holes with his fingers,
covers the seeds, wonders how anything living
could ever return to this place.  He thinks for a moment
he hears his children’s laughter, but it’s only
the cries of birds who pass overhead,
and the man stands, watches, 
leaves the rest of the seeds 
uncovered for them to eat.