Day 370

Wipe the tears
from the hearts of my children
if I am killed, the mother says
to someone she has just met,
and he, who barely knows
her name, nods his head,
agrees.  With his cloth of horror,
his cloth of fear, his cloth
of memory, he will wipe
the children’s hearts
so they can beat unimpeded.
With his cloth of history
he will clean their wounds, with
his cloth of outrage, his cloth
of disbelief, he will staunch
the bleeding, pack the lacerations.
He will dip the cloth
in contaminated water
that will turn clear and pure
with his goodness, his intention.  He will
wipe the children’s hearts
free of tears so they will have room
for joy, for laughter, for their mother’s
love, which, though
she is dead, will swell
and fill every vessel.

Day 369

Trees felled, fields where eggplant grew
savaged, burned.  Two brothers walk a whole day
from where they are staying to where they lived,
look over the land, unrecognizable.
What they see there is what they remember
and what they have lost.  What they are looking for
is something they can’t name, not even
to each other.  One bends to pick up a stone.
The other watches him, looks at the stone
his brother holds in his hand.  Feels
its weight, its smoothness.  With a stone
like this, we could start building a city,
one brother says.  And the other — the one
holding the stone — bends to pick up 
a second stone, places it
in his brother’s palm, looks
into his eyes. They are our mother
and father, he says.  The brothers stand,
look out toward where the field ends,
see for a moment the house they lived in,
the street that was crowded with people, sounds. 

Day 368

Birds of prey circle the sky.
What are they looking for?  Like everyone
else, they are hungry.  Death-eaters,
death-seekers, they have plenty
to nourish them.  The earth
is saturated with blood,
but the birds will be fed by flesh, 
by dreams, by memories.
A girl of twelve looks up
at the birds, watches them
circle, imitates their cries.  
They are louder right this minute
than the drones, the warplanes.
I will take the dead into my soul, she
tells herself, and I will survive!
I too can inhabit the sky.

Day 367

In the dark early morning, a child
sits by himself on a pile of stones.
He has only one hand, and he is throwing
a ball up into the air and catching it.
Over and over he throws the ball.
Sometimes it rolls away.  Sometimes
it lands perfectly, right in his palm.
It’s not easy to see before full daylight comes,
but he’s found the ball the night before
and could barely sleep, so excited
he’s been to practice catching.  The boy
has no parents, no siblings, no aunts 
or uncles or grandparents.  He could throw
the ball in the air one time for everyone
he has lost, and he’d be there
an hour.  More.  What he has
is one hand and a ball.  What he has
is a morning that begins to grow
a little brighter.

Day 366

(the second year begins)

Don’t say we are dead.  Tell 
whoever you’re speaking to
that we walked the beaches, planted gardens,
held one another’s hands with tenderness on summer nights,
watched our children grow, sang to them,
bathed their soft bodies at the end of the day,
stirred pots in our kitchens, stood
at the window taking in the fragrances of herbs,
waiting while the moon rose above the rooftops.
Don’t speak of our deaths without remembering
that we lived, that we loved the sea, that we leapt
with joy under its waves, fell asleep
listening to its rhythm.  Don’t forget 
that we tasted peaches, strawberries, melons
and felt the sweet juices run down our chins.  Did I
mention the breeze?  The rain?  The first
rains of autumn?  The smell of earth
when the rains dried, when sunlight
illumined the drops that still clung to the branches?
Say we took all this in. Say we refused
to leave ourselves behind.  Say we were alive
the way everyone is alive, that we told stories
about what we saw and heard, that when they 
murdered us, each of us bore a world 
away with us; but, like the impression left
in sand when one has been lying for hours
under the sun, the shapes
of our souls persist in the fetid air, the broken
shadows, the shredded fields where we
will not be forgotten.

Day 365

Where are you, small child?
I have looked for you in the blackened air.
I have looked for you in the streets
that are not streets anymore but open tombs.
I have looked for you in the hearts of those
who have destroyed us, and I can’t find you.
Are you in the fallen roof?  The remains
of the hallway? The eyes of your dog
who, miraculously, still lives, perhaps
so she can hold you within herself.  
Every day I feed her what I can.
Today was canned beans, yesterday
a few slices of bread. 

Day 364

A mother bends over her bleeding child.
She has carried him all the way
to the hospital, stepped
over fallen rock, blasted concrete.
How could a child of six
have so much blood in him?
His blood runs like a river
through broken streets.  His blood
swells like the sea, like the rains
that will come.  His blood is a waterfall
that spills from his chest, his abdomen,
drains arms, legs, face; so that
when she lays him down 
on the hospital floor, her hand
cradling his head, he is as white
as the walls, and nothing
in him is moving except his blood
that flows and flows without end.

Day 363

The sky is a shroud over all the land.
The child watches as morning light
comes slowly, slowly, and asks herself
what will be uncovered.  There are bodies
in the road.  There is blood
in the soil.  There are faces
in the high trees, eyes of those
who have been killed.  The child
sits, watches.  Everyone else in the tent
is asleep.  She speaks a few words
to the darkness about to be overcome
and holds one hand with the other
as the horses of inevitability
pull in the dawn, gallop now
toward whatever this day will be.

Day 362

The boy wants to go to school
but there is no school.
There’s a tent where somebody’s mother
is teaching songs, but his mother is afraid
to let him go there.  He tries to remember
what it was like to go to school —
a room with tables, books, chairs —
and he wishes he could have
just one morning again
sitting with his friends,
waiting for the teacher, looking
out the windows to trees, fields,
everything where it was.  Everything
where it used to be.

Day 361

All day this girl has been thinking
about her friend, the one
with green eyes, the one 
who played the flute and sang.
The one who sat up with her all night
after her grandmother died in her sleep,
the one who laughed when the pot of food
they were cooking spilled on the floor.
All day she has been thinking
about her friend, what they 
would be saying now to each other,
what songs they might be listening to.
She has been wondering what pain
her friend was in when she was killed,
or whether it happened so fast
she didn’t have time for pain.
Where are the fingers now
that worked so hard to learn the flute?
All day she has been trying to remember
a verse of one of the songs her friend
sang, and can’t.  It feels to her
like the only important thing
in the world right now
is to remember that verse.