A Long Perspective

Tag: newborn

  • New life in dying Aleppo

    New life in dying Aleppo

    2010 2011 056The newborn, screaming, red-faced,

    held by his feet, upside-down,

    slapped, pinched into that first

    cry, his first breath angry, the mother

    unconscious, gutted on the table, her leg

    broken, her arm broken, hauled in 9-months

    pregnant, shrapnel in her belly,

    the house blown to smithereens around her.

    All that death. The baby’s

    heart silent, the dust, the rubble,

    the bombs, almost the last

    doctor in ancient Aleppo

    saying to a nurse,

    “Hand me the scalpel.”

     

    FEWalls

     

  • In the dream

    c. FEWalls

    There is no end to the darkness above my face –
    the darkness, moonless and without stars.

    Below me, a small mound of palest light
    fits stark and clean on the root of night.

    No movement sensed in the silence,
    no other face or hand,

    as if a newborn were laid asleep among the dunes,
    she awakens wild with cold,

    and the mother has turned away for the last time.

    FEWalls