Curtain Call

The camp outside the city strafed,    
A milling ‘round the craters torn.        
The refugees, the makeshift stoves,      
And always children playing war.      
       
They’ve only known of guns & death      
Since they & all their friends were born.        
Now more than half of them are gone,      
There seems no symbol left for hope.      
       
I recently was on a truck        
That came in from the hills nearby.      
The fighters poor of little else,      
With boxes, sacks in scant supply.      
       
The men unloaded, pulled me down      
To bring me to a plywood shed      
And drape me o’er a rope of hemp    
Above a floor of tampered ground.      
       
I suddenly was left alone      
And felt so far away, my home,      
The other side of rolling pass,      
A stream, the horses fed on grass.      
       
A moment, then all had gone still,      
I heard no bursts, artillery.      
Then sudden from the open door      
A boy appeared, and then a girl!        
       
“Come in my children, quietly,  
I was so lonely, now there’s you.  
Stay here & play & hide with me,  
You bring back happy memories!”  
       
       
       
       
Photo by Anja Niedringhaus/