Day 260

Smell of decay.  The dust, the canvas
walls of the tents, this hospital floor.
What did they do to you
when you were tortured? one surgeon
asks his friend. They are sitting
in the crowded corridor
in bloody scubs, not
having others.  The one
who had been tortured
hangs his head, shakes it slowly.
Too unbearable to tell, he says
to the bloodstained linoleum,
but it sounds like nothing, like the sound
of roots plunging downward, the loneliness
at the sea’s bottom, broken fingers
grasping at light.  This day
they have treated sixty, seventy
children, most of whom died, many
of whom may die in days,
weeks.  Once, the surgeon
who was tortured
tells his friend, jasmine
grew along these roads.
It pervaded the air. He raises
his eyes, looks down the corridor
of death.  Tries for a second
to remember the voices
of children playing.  How
did you survive? the other
asks, though no one now
could define survival.