Day 436

The smell of rain contends 
with the stench of death, stench
of rotting corpses, sewage.  Rain
carves rivers through ruined streets;
children play in them,
laugh as the sudden current
runs through their fingers.  What sea of grief
will this water spill into?  Whose
lives will it carry, whose memories,
whose histories?  What words
will be drowned there?  What thoughts
that will never be spoken?  Whose
love, whose touch, whose learning,
whose despair, whose tormented nights
have become this sludge, this debris? And what
will remain when the sun dries the land,
when the children’s laughter is silenced,
when everything sinks back into dust?