Day 485/Ceasefire Day 15

Later you will tell the children
who’ll be born when these atrocities
have ended once and forever, whose
lives will have begun with the liberation —
later you will tell them, stroking
their small, safe heads, looking
into their unclouded eyes, that there were those
who walked for miles to reach this place,
carrying the few belongings they had,
carrying their children, their parents,
on their backs.  Later you will tell them,
because it will be important that they know,
there were families who slept in graveyards,
who felt they were as dead as those
who slept under the ground.  You will tell them
you knew a woman who buried the severed limbs
of her children when no whole body
was found;  a child whose parents
were killed before he had breathed
one single day; a man who was imprisoned
in another country before he’d even told
people there the stories of that time.  They will question
you, puzzled, incredulous.  You will tell them
this is enough for now; but we must not forget.
Then they will race each other from the house,
through the orchard, their bare small feet
wet from sweet morning grass,
and look out over fields abundant with what
you will have planted in soil
soaked with blood, nourished by the bones of the martyred.