Day 631

from a photograph


Outside the hospital, a man and a woman
are tenderly holding the body
of an infant who died
from malnutrition.  Had they been
taking her to the hospital
for treatment — walked there
from wherever they’d been —
and arrived too late?  The infant
is wrapped in a white
shroud, maybe a sheet or a pillow case.
You can see, in the photograph,
the top of her head: perfectly
formed, a few strands of hair.
She is weeks old at most.
The man and the woman —
are they her parents? Grandparents?
The man has some gray in his hair.
The woman’s face is weary.  Weary
from grief? Starvation? Twenty months
of brutality, and, before that, years?
They hold the infant with such
tenderness, their love
and their mourning are in their fingers.
Both are weeping.  The infant’s life
is dissolving now into poisoned air, 
into toxic water.  Dissolving
as they walked, ran, carrying her.
Now she belongs to the earth.
Now she is only a name
and a memory.  Their hands
learning her by heart, so as
not to forget.