Day 479/Ceasefire Day 9

They are walking north, toward
what had been their lives.
An endless line of people: parents
carrying children, children
carrying younger children, old
people walking slowly, some
being pushed in wagons,
infants on their fathers’ backs.
They are walking north, knowing
that when they arrive 
what they’ll find
is not what they remember,
knowing that the anguished work
of digging will perhaps yield
the bones, the skulls
of those who were martyred,
whose hands they can still feel
touching their hands, whose laughter
has been absorbed by the dust.  They
are walking north.  Some are singing.
Some have tears running down their faces.
One says, It’s like being able to return
to the villages of our grandparents.
Another says, sobbing, If only
my grandfather had lived
to see this day. A boy says, Tomorrow
we will begin to rebuild. A woman
keeps thinking she sees
her children, though she knows
their small bodies have decomposed
under the rubble.  They are with me,
she thinks to herself.  I am
bringing them home.