Ode to A Kurdish Child

(Inspired by a picture in Time magazine, January 16, 1989.)

Little child lying still

Among the lifeless corpses there

Your life is dead

Over with---

Too soon for me, who curious, stares;

Disbelieving

And in shock,

Upon your picture here.

Who are you?

And how old?

Where, oh where can your mother be?

Can it be, she’s there with you,

Crushed beneath the bodies so?

And did you sisters and brothers have,

And do they share your grave?

Open, green and crowded---

Reminding me of a history---

Of a Holocaust I thought was dead---

Of an ugliness that died ago---

Of an anger I’ll never outgrow---

Of the endless tears

I’ve shed in secret;

The tears I shed for them---

I shed them now for you.