Day 178

A song I knew as a child on the radio, sung
by a woman whose Sephardic lullaby I sang
to Ciel the day she was born.  Lucerito de mi alma:
later she had it tattooed on her arm. The song
I heard today was about a storm, though not
necessarily a real storm. Walk on, it says,
walk on.  I am thinking of those walking
from one terrorized place to another, carrying
what they can.  Carrying their children,
too tired to walk.  Carrying the sick ones,
the old ones. When I heard the song
at fourteen I thought it was God
being sung about:  you’ll never walk alone.
They are walking past corpses.  One
stops, takes a blanket from a bag
she is holding, covers the corpse of a child.
Walks on.  Never alone. What kind of God?
Lucerito:   the child someone’s, surely.  Dreams
tossed and blown?  Someone interviewed
on the radio said the children of Gaza
have no dreams.  No dreams anymore.
What’s left to dream of?  This one
who wanted to play basketball has lost a leg.
This one who loved to draw has lost her fingers.
Walking.  Past corpses.  Past everything
fallen, crumbled.  Who walks with them? Oh cover them
so you will not see how they are being eaten
by rats.  By birds. By everything
that is hungry and still wants to live.