Cemetery In The Sand

A Nursery Rhyme For Iraqi Conscripts


Between the death
And the weeping
The flies alone
Will be well fed

I am told we can kill
Two hundred of them
In one second
Two hundred conscipts
The age of my son
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one
They will crawl on all fours
Crying for home

Two hundred a second
Too many to place gently
Each in the ground
Dumped two, three, four
At a time
Not even a body bag
Between them and the earth

On the sand
Others strewn
Belching
As they decay
Into withered rocks
Hard, charred mummies
In oversized clothes
Lying in patches
Of their own grease

Before the death
There will be a moment's release
The fleas leave
But then the rats come

The infinite sadness of the world
Is the death of its young


© 2003 Philomene Long

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