Day 360

The child dug a hole in the ground
and put her doll into it.  
Then a stick, a rock, another rock.
Each thing had a name
of someone dead, the name
of her father, her brother, her mother, her friend.
The doll had her name, it was herself
buried in dust, beside others she loved.
She sat on the ground, staring
at the hole, the weeds she put near it
to honor them all, and herself
among them. She kept sitting
there; it was almost night.
Now and then she would smooth
the dust with her hand. She would talk
to them quietly as though she were dead
alongside them, as though they were all
lying there, buried under the stars, telling
stories to each other,
looking up at the jewelled sky.

Day 359

The wind is so strong
it blows away
memories, blows away words,
tears, the sound of flesh
burning, blows away a dream
of horses standing in a field, blue
rosemary flowers, bending
wheat.  The wind has a voice
you know, a voice
that moves through you like 
blood, like a river, like
something rising.  The wind
is so strong it is carrying you
to a place you have
never seen, pushing you,
tossing you.  What you remember
before it began  
was a street, children running,
houses falling, then suddenly everything
dark.  Are you my death
you ask the wind, is this
how you come for me?

Day 358

Once this tree was abundant with leaves.
They have all been scorched, they have dried
and turned brown before their season.
My children’s arms are as thin
as the branches, their eyes
as empty.  All afternoon I have sat
watching my kids and their friends
kick a soccer ball. (Are they
ghosts yet?  Will the dust
they’re playing in be littered tomorrow
with corpses?) I am trying to learn by heart
the shape of this one’s chin, that one’s
cheekbones. The warmth
of their bodies in sleep.  Sound
of their breathing.  If I make of myself
a cloister, a sealed chest, can I hold
what’s imperiled, can I preserve it?
Night is falling now, soon their game
will come to an end.  (Will this be
the last night?   And what
will I do without their bodies?)

Day 357

Two children walk 
through a garden
they’ve made
in the midst of tents.
Vegetables, fruit. How
are they watering them, 
that they’ve grown
so green, so large?
Fragrance of jasmine,
oregano, sage.  Difficult
not to believe hope is useless.
Unbearable to look
at the blank expressions,
the shuffling walks,
the night sky
populated not by stars
but by warplanes. Yet the children
are laughing, running, bending
to look at what was not ripe
just days ago but today
will be harvested, eaten.

Day 356

What falls from the sky
is a child, and another child.
You saw them playing
with friends, with a soccer ball,
a stray dog.  Now children, ball,
dog are indistinguishable, have become
dust and smoke and memory.  What
if the crater the bomb made
could become a lake
suddenly filled with fresh,
clear water? What if you — child
who witnessed your friends
dissolve into a torrent of fire —
could summon them, call
their names, watch as they stood
reconstituted, whole — boy,
boy, dog — and began to move
toward you to a gleaming place
where all of you could drink and be sated?

Day 355

A child is walking outside a school
that is not a school anymore
but a shelter.  She is walking
without looking at anything, not even
the dust, not even the sky.  It has been months
since she lost her parents, her brothers,
her aunt.  Months since she woke 
in her bed, dressed for school,
walked with her friends past houses
and gardens.  The child is thin;
she has lost the weight of her family.
She has lost the weight of the hours
she loved, the voices, the stories.
Her mind is a field where nothing
grows, a blank space
predatory birds cross over
and do not stop.

Day 354

Pieces of flesh flying everywhere
after the explosion.  The doctor,
so near he is amazed
to still be alive, asks himself
whether he should go in
and try to rescue whomever he can
or whether a second explosion
will come and that one 
will get him.  He goes.  He knows
he cannot not go.  He finds
a man screaming under the rubble,
a bone sticking out of one leg, blood
everywhere.  My kids! he is screaming.
My kids!  Where are my children?
The doctor digs him out with his hands.
takes off his own shirt, makes it a tourniquet.
The man doesn’t stop screaming his childrens’ names.
They listen together as pieces of bodies
fall like leaves all around them
for voices the man knows.
They listen, listen.

Day 353

The boy was making dinner
for himself and his father.
A little zucchini, a little rice.
Not much food, but better than nothing.
He added an onion, a slice of garlic.
When you have practically nothing
it’s all delicious, the boy 
was thinking,  His father
had taught him to cook, was
proud of him, was out
doing what work he could find.
When you have practically nothing
you do what you can.  The boy
was standing in the kitchen, the smell
of onion, garlic, oil filling
the air, overcoming the stench
outside the window 
of rotting garbage, rotting corpses.
Then suddenly a neighbor
burst through the door, his face
ashen, his hands shaking.
There was a sniper, he said.
Your father is dead, he said.
The boy stood over the stove,
stirring the zucchini, the onion, the garlic.
What will my life be now?
Who will come and eat with me now?

Day 352

The boy is sitting on the ground
in front of his tent, sounding out
words.  A year ago he had been learning
to read; then everything ended.
Seven times his family has pitched
and unpitched their tent.  Seven times
the boy has picked up his books,
his backpack, and walked
to the next place.  It’s
all right, his father has said;
So many have died but we are still alive.
Your mother, your sisters — we
are living.  The boy looks
into his father’s eyes.  He has learned
to read faces better than words.  He has
learned to read sky, shadow, movements.
This is the sinister knowledge of war.
These are the phonetics of genocide.

Day 351

Bring boiled water (if you can find
water and fuel), try cleansing
the wound.  We don’t know
which of us will be alive
tomorrow.  Do what you can,
treat the injury as though
the leg, the arm, the chest
will heal, as though you knew
that rest was possible, as though
the sufferer could be cared for,
the sutures monitored, removed.
Bring whatever you can, treat
this person as though
you could be assured that nothing
else will harm him.  As though
it were an ordinary time
and you could send him 
back to his home.