Day 376

There’s a video of the child —
not two years old — walking
in the living room of his house,
throwing a ball.  Laughing.  Then
the genocide comes and hunger
begins to consume him.  He grows
smaller, weaker.  Doesn’t walk
across the room, leaves the ball
in a corner.  Whatever food
his parents find, they give to him.
He eats:  avidly at first.  Then weakness
surpasses hunger.  His mother
holds him as she did
when he was a newborn.  His body
grows backward.  Dissolves.
Evaporates.  Each hour he grows
closer to the Nothing he came from.
At last it takes him
from his mother’s arms, 
folds him into itself.

Day 375

Lay a cloth over the bodies of the dead,
Cover the eyes that stared into the dark.
Cover the mouths that gasped, that cried
silently the names of all their beloved.
Cover the ears where every sound stopped
but the sound of the blast.
Lay a cloth over the bodies
whose arms and legs have already gone
into splintered graves.  Lay a cloth
over the shrieks, the dreams, the fragments
of songs. Cover the future that some
no longer believed in, cover the thousand syllables
of despair.  Soak the cloth in blood, in every
river you have known, in the sea’s
repetition, the fluids of birth. Stretch the cloth
over black fields, soil that yields nothing,
bones of animals bleached by the sun. Then
stand, look out at the endlessness of cloth,
bend your head, speak
whatever words you remember of rage and blessing. 

Day 374

The first day the child walked, he was killed.
He stood, looked around, took one step
toward his father, whose arms opened
to receive him.  The sun was bright,
the dust had settled since the day before,
the child brought himself
to a stand, put one little foot in front of himself
and walked toward his father.  Who could say
where he would have gone next?  His father’s
arms open, the pace of the child’s
movement confident, strong.  He walked.
He looked at his father, both of them
smiling.  He reached him.  That’s how
they were found, the child’s small legs
and his father’s long legs tangled together.
That’s how they died.  The child walked
to his father. Then suddenly couldn’t see
him; everything black.  But he could feel
his father’s arms receiving him, wrapped
tightly, then more tightly, around him.

Day 373

(for Mohammed Mhawish)

The poet’s friends are falling
like felled trees.  His mentor
murdered, fellow students gone.
Who will remain to tell
the story?  Each day another death.
More.  Each day the air
blackens, flames erupt, bodies
and parts of bodies plunge
to the ground.  In a burnt
field, severed hands.  Which
of these hands carved wood, planted
seeds, fitted one pipe to another,
wiped the forehead of a sick child, shaved
a beard, played an instrument, wrote a poem?

Day 372

Who will find the body of this child?
His family is carrying it in plastic bags
to where they will bury him.  His laughter
in one bag, his fear in another.  The sweetness
of his voice in the bag his sister holds,
the wind that blew through his hair
as he ran — his brother holds the bag
with that.  Not long ago he lay
in his crib making sounds that began
to weave themselves into sentences,
stories.  Who will piece him together
now, so he can sleep in the earth,
a whole boy?

Day 371

The girl’s aunt has been raising her in a shelter
since the girl’s parents were killed.  The girl
is talking about how they dug her out of the rubble,
how she called to the rescuers in a weak voice,
how much pain she was in, how her arms
afterward had to be amputated. I loved 
to draw, she says.  And my mother
was teaching me to knit. Six days
into the second year, no end
to this in sight. I don’t know,
she says, what else I will lose.  Now she is talking
about how they feed people at the shelter —
one meal a day — and how her aunt
gives her food from her own plate, because
she is growing.  She dreams sometimes
that her arms are growing back, that she can grasp
a fork again, a knife.  Hold someone’s hand.

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.