Thirty-nine Children
Thirty-nine children destroyed.
Four of them, sisters.
Their blood a red atlas, spattered roses
on the bedroom walls they cringed behind,
their unfinished bodies and minds,
finished. Does anyone remember
what a child is
when it is not collaterally dismembered
into small feet and hands and faces
that had no choice but to trust the world
that savaged it like roses?
Five toes, an ankle and a heel
still occupy the floral running shoe
that never made it all the way to school.
Your bootprints on the throats of baby swans
like the bombpits of mass graves
where the hysterical mothers rave
in grief and rage
over what you have damaged
like ferocious boars who wear
the tusks of the moon like missiles
to gore children embedded like roots in the night
out of their sleep
like a plague of angels
sanitized by the height
you kill from.
You are not a man.
You are not human.
The lightning is more merciful than you.
Don't let the medals
or the protocols of murder
you glory in
fool you,
you're a ghoul in a cockpit,
death's eye in a dropp of dew.
Nine civilians killed for every soldier,
the cowards are herded into the military
for their own safety
and for the civilians who take it by the millions
on the chin,
they don't hand out medals,
there's nothing to win or promote.
Do you know how much courage it takes
to die when you're nine years old
to gratify a general's heart,
to advance the campaigns of the politicians,
to appall the pundits into passionate opinions
that suckle the mob at the faucets of their fangs
with the milk and honey
of primetime bedside stories
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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