Words That Burn

After the Attack, by John Calvin Rezmerski (1942-)

When they crawled out of the cellars

of the burned houses,

and came dirty and dripping

out of the sloughs,

and saw how many of the dead were their children,

and saw how bright the children’s blood was

next to the dull adult blood,

and when they saw

how quickly flies light

and maggots are born

and saw

how hard it is to tell

human guts from a split log’s

and when they understood

how hated they were

they swallowed their tears

and puked

and saw the puke and tears

and puked again.

And they wailed hoarse prayers

to let it not be real,

not be real children,

let them belong to someone else,

let them be lambs,

let them be beasts,

let them be alive again,

let me not know them by name.

No prayer is big enough for some things.