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?