 |
| Photo of Aleppo courtesy of Asia News |
Road out of Aleppo
Watching the
evening news
He trudges along in
broken step, pale
face frozen in a blank
stare,
and all the long, long
river of moving
bodies pass him by. Even
the frail move
faster, framing him
against their blur
of anguish, like a film
that runs slow
motion, etching one
small centerpiece
against the screen of
the unwilling eye.
Upon his back―as if coupled there,
ribs fused to ribs—rides an ancient man,
more skeletal than
fleshed, skull
rocking gently,
rhythmically, arms
crooked absurdly over
the hard-set
slope of shoulders, hands
snatching at
the brittle air.
Thin-stick shanks dangle
loosely over the young
man’s arms,
bob against the plunge
and stagger
of his legs—like metronomes that
pace
the broken angle of
each step.
Still they come, he
comes—like
a crab
caught in an
unremitting tide—
this strange,
two-headed creature
all its own, with its
four unseeing eyes,
its single haunted
soul. An awful
metamorphosis, a horror
that we cannot
look upon, nor speak
of, nor forget.
And still they come, inseparable,
inexorable, the dying
and the young―
a ghost that rides the
shoulders of the world.
© 2017 Judith Deem Dupree
