From the Rubble of the Day 

The wells of fire keep spurting 

black rain over roofs of tin. 

Hospitals burn open at the gut. 

Schools cough alphabets in smoke. 

A missile rents the hopes in a prayer-hall. 

In the farms 
an iron wing sleeps 
between the wheat furrows. 

A boy carries his sister, 

a branch carrying flame. 

A kettle boils its last gruel 

under an urgent siren. 

And everywhere the voices of men 

in ironed jackets: 

security 

strategy 

balance 

inevitable response… 

Words are polished like medals 

while the streets fill with broken shoes. 

Night keeps receiving the metal rain. 

The earth keeps swallowing it. 

Yet morning arrives. 

Someone boils tea on a cracked stove. 

A woman washes dust from a child’s hair. 

Bread appears again 

from the stubborn patience of hands. 

A man straightens a bent doorframe. 

Someone plants onions 

beside a crater. 

And slowly 

through smoke-stung light 

the ordinary work of living 

begins again— 

the quiet insistence of water, 

of bread, 

of arms 

still lifting one another 

from the rubble of the day. 

**