Day 384

How can we take any more, the mother is crying out
in the darkening evening. She is holding
her children’s hands, skeletal hands, more
like the hands of the elderly.  Her children
stand on either side of her, their eyes
blank.  Tears run down her face 
as she names the collapsed house,
the grandparents dead, the friends
dead, the food gone, the water
gone, food parcels
falling on children’s heads,
killing them…How
can we take any more she
cries out again, to whom, to what?
To the sky filled with drones?  The piles
of rubble?  The bodies lying unburied
in the street?  Who is listening?  Who?