For the al-Najjar Children

 

The gaping world-maw, canines

Silvered, piercing, hollow-tipped

Each dipped in minted ink, each one

An unwaved flag. No one wants

Your names, no one wants your

Heartbeating, your honeyed affirmations.

That is what we are told. We

Can only read gilded names, latticed

In rococo seriph. But you become

Numbered dead, unselved, unimpacting.

To name is to posit humanness, to sketch

Your births & your infant struggles. To shade

In ribcage, rhythmic lung-swell. Reach

Your small hands around your father’s finger,

Clutching, in presumption of safety. 

There was nowhere to go. You were bidden

To aid & your aid was your death. Your

Many deaths. Brother unto brother, sister

Unto sister, scattered unto earth, dust

Under rubble. Under collapse, blood unto

Root, root unto flower, flower under foot.

Limpid flags threadbare unto dust, 

All of it, all of it forgotten. Star & moon

& clip of sun, dirt & grass & soothing

Wind. What many florid dreams dammed

In your dying. What countless rhapsodies

& tender loves. You cannot grow

To hate the world that grew too

Laconic to spell out its hate anymore. A

Mathematical killing. A data set. We

Are humans but maybe we are only

Our stunted parochial violence first. 

I sing your names, al-Najjar children. 

It means almost nothing, I know. Almost.