And the Lions Wept

What is this that shines from every part of you?
Love-- so strange a word.
It describes all
            that I have ever
      known of you.
And though
      we have never met,
I find us here...
Together.

And no bombs here,
Though there litter lay upon many.
A quiet yellow-tinted moon
            follows above.
I find every tear ever cried
                  so very close to mine--
So many restless lives
      never known.

So many faces.
So many a marvel,
      seven billion,
      four hundred and fifty-five million,
      nine hundred and eighty-five thousand,
                  seven hundred and seventy-six.
And on and on,
Every bit a stainless flower,
                  birth their blooms
                  oh mother.
Oh my mother, no...
      she bears a broad embrace.
Watching, as her perennial-springs summer
            beneath such wintery falls.

Sixty years, now as ghostly and broken
      as every other empty story,
Every embrace taken from him,
He stands at the crumbling ledge
      of what was once a home.
Where are the morning birds?
Who buried them?
Have they gone
      to where my beautiful sons
                        have flown?
There is sorrow here,
            only pain,
Beneath the blankets
      of concrete and ash.

And the girl next to him,
      blood and blood,
      that same empty stare.
Tears caked in mud
      drying
      red against leather orange seats.
"My baby, my baby,
      tafali, tafali alhulu..."
Now what memory will last
      of my mother's sonorous voice?
Will she return like waves in the night?
Shall I wait forever?

Lament, lament, lament.
There is only sadness tonight.
Yes the beautiful black depth glistens
      full of stars.
And true, it is a blessing to breathe.
But all I can feel is lament.
Lament, there is only sadness tonight,
      only pain.