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.