Day 457

Orders come that the hospital
must be evacuated, despite
the doctors telling them
it’s impossible:  too many patients,
illness and injuries too severe.
The old man gets help
rising from his bed.  Weeks
since he tried to walk.  Slowly
he detaches the iv’s:  fluids,
antibiotics, other medicines
he doesn’t know the use for.
Hands shaking, he moves
through the corridors.  Everyone
broken, stumbling, using the walls
to steady themselves.  He joins
the hobbled procession
out of the inferno the hospital
is already becoming.  Where they are
supposed to be going is far,
farther than the old man
has walked in years.  He takes the arm
of a younger man.  They walk
together.  Where they are going
is only another stopping place,
he thinks, and remembers a rock
he stood on once, years before
in another place,
in a rushing river, attempting to reach
the far riverbank, deafening water
crashing around him, relentless current
threatening to overcome him,
carry him away.

Day 456

The journalist’s wife is in labor
while he must go
to report on yet another atrocity,
and before he can see his newborn son,
he and his colleagues are killed.
The child comes into the world
and his father leaves.  Did they
salute one another in the doorway,
moving in different directions?
The mother lies in her hospital bed,
cradling her infant, who 
has no father.  For now
he is warm enough, dry enough.
For now he is strong, whole.
Who knows when or whether
they will be driven
out of the hospital?  Who knows
what the conditions will be
when they get to their tent?  For now
the infant is alive, the mother
numbed with grief but healthy.
Who will protect them now
from cold?  From rain and wind?
She pulls her son even closer to her body,
as though she could shelter him there
(as she did all these months)
until the bombing stops.

Day 455

The boy sits on a hospital bed.
He has been evacuated to Egypt.
No one is here with him:  an airstrike
has killed his father, his mother, every one
of his siblings.  How
has he been the one
to survive? He has one leg:
the other leg, too, he has left
behind, amputated without anesthesia.
Now in this hospital
they have had to remove
even more of the leg: infection
of the femur, close to the hip.
He sits, staring at the doorway
no one but doctors and nurses
comes through: he wears
a blood pressure cuff,
a pulsometer. What does it matter,
he thinks.  And wonders
whether they’ll keep on
cutting off more and more
of him – hip, stomach, chest,
arms, neck, eyes, ears, even
his teeth, even
his forehead – until
he is like his family.  Until
he is nothing.  Powder, dust, particles.

Day 454

Three children are standing
outside the tent they have made
from bits of cloth, plastic wrapping,
paper.  It has all fallen apart
in the rain.  It’s not
a tent anymore but a tangle of wetness,
one piece indistinguishable
from another, the way bodies
that have been bombed —
their parents, their brothers —
become indistinguishable
from each other.  The way,
when they went to find them
in the place where they had been
killed, the children found hands,
toes, pieces of shirts; but no
parents.  No brothers.  No
whole bodies they could
identify.  Three children stand
in the rain, sorting through
what had sheltered them
for a while, trying to identify
one panel, one shred of cloth:
this was the door we made,
this was what we used to hang
over what we called a window.  But now
with everything else that isn’t
left for them, this too — 
the naming of things —
is slipping away from them
in the rain that keeps falling, falling.

Day 453

from a photograph

The doctor walks slowly
through the rubble of his hospital,
tanks surrounding him.  He is alone,
the only one walking.
He is still in his white coat.
He knows with each step
he approaches what may be his death.
He thinks of his son, who was killed
just weeks ago.  Another son,
still alive.  Is he thinking about
the years he has lived? The hospital
broken, shattered.  Agonized patients.
His parents, his training, his wife?  Those
he has worked with through all these months?
Despite the wound in his leg
he moves without stopping, deliberately.
With each step he knows he is moving closer
to their snipers, their taunts,
their instruments of torture.
He moves slowly, steadily.
They cannot take this from him:
his dignity, his steadfastness,
whatever they are planning to do to him.

Day 452

The doctors can’t cure this nine month old child
of the bacteria that occupies his gut
because there are few antibiotics
and the water he needs to rehydrate
is the same contaminated water he drank
that gave him the infection.
If he were elsewhere, if this were another time,
he would go home, be fed, hydrated, given
medicines, and heal.  His parents
know that what he needs
will kill him, but what can they do?  He’s
thirsty, he’s crying out for water. 
What they can give him
will soothe his thirst and poison him.
And the doctors who save him for an hour,
a night, know that they’re saving him
only to see him buried, days
from now, in the hospital yard. 

Day 451

One of the infant twins
dies of cold.  A day later
the other follows.  Their mother,
whose womb was so full, sits
in the freezing tent
with empty arms.  They’d grown
so still, who moved
vibrantly for weeks inside her.
Their cries had become weaker
than they were the minute
they’d slipped into this world.
In the end they even stopped
sucking the trickles of milk
she offered them.  First one,
then the other.  She had imagined them
playing, walking, pulling off
each other’s shoes, giggling.
Now all she has left of them
are their names.  Now
she must put away their tiny shirts,
the cloths she swaddled them in.

Day 450

(for Dr Hussam Abu Safiya)

 
What his thoughts were
when the soldiers captured him
we don’t know, we may
never know.  What we can assume
is that they were for his patients.
The hospital had been bombed
for weeks:  one by one,
departments reduced to ruins.
Pediatrics.  ICU.   He
stayed.  He stayed, despite
their murdering his child.
He stayed despite his own wounds,
swearing to help his patients, to remain
as long as there was one who
needed him. Pleaded
with the world not to look away.
To send medicine, gauze.  On 
the last day they took him
along with the others, stripped
him naked, beat him
with electrical wire 
for his knowledge, 
his integrity, his resistance.  Have they
murdered him yet? Are they
torturing him instead, smirking
at his pain while they decide
whether to kill him?
Trying to make him writhe?
If they throw his body
wherever they may throw it
do they really believe
they can dispose of
his voice?  His compassion?

Day 449

(from a photograph)


They huddle on filthy blankets
in the remains
of what may have been a hallway
in the hospital, three children — brothers? —
sitting close together, the oldest
holding the youngest, who is maybe
fourteen, fifteen months.  The hospital
is being bombed again, has been bombed
for days.  Eighteen more killed, twenty.  Who knows
where these children’s parents are, or how
they have died?  Their eyes
are startled, hollow, terrified.  The youngest
clutches his brother’s jacket; his brother
is pulling him close, their faces
touching, the toddler’s mouth
slightly open in a cry or a whimper.
The middle brother has his hand
over his mouth — to stifle a sound?
To soothe himself?  There is such
love among them, such tenderness.
The oldest boy, who could be
nine, has promised his brothers
that he will be father to them, mother,
doctor, teacher, everything.  He will care for them
through bitter cold and explosions,
until fire, shrapnel, hunger, a sniper’s bullet
comes to claim them. 
Until no one can care for anyone anymore.

Day 448

(from a photograph)

 
The father is holding his baby,
who froze to death.  His arms
tenderly cradle the infant, whose size
is no bigger than a loaf of bread,
a parcel of books. He tried
everything he could
to warm her but cold
overtook her.  The brim
of the father’s hat
casts a shadow over his face,
but the shadow is deeper than that,
more vast than the size of his baby,
older than the weeks the baby lived.
The baby lived!  She suckled, cried.
Made small cooing sounds, looked out
at the shadowy world around her.
Her eyes met her father’s eyes.
Her perfectly swirled ears
knew the thunder of bombing,
desperate voices, screams
but also laughter.  Her father
laughed with her; this too
is etched into his face
but only as memory.  You can see it
in the way he closes his lips, 
that never again will open
to speak to her, that will only
slowly begin to release
the infinite syllables of mourning.