Afterward – Vandal Poem of the Day

Across fields of native weeds holding their breath,

and cows breathing,

we escaped as far as a stand of slow-fleeing trees.

Screaming more and more, the devoted, hardworking

ambulances nearby began

rushing away toward ERs and then to gasoline bars.

We lay down on our frightened raincoats.

Our shadows among the oaks

remained on tiptoe, on watch in all directions.

We lay there till in moonlit midnight came more

assault-rifle shooting elsewhere.

The wind winged away gasping and hid in ditches

with the surviving children, the ditches

dug themselves deeper into

clayey dread, and dark ravines crowded up into

our helpless thoughts, and memories of

earlier times of such chaos

rushed through you. And then, deep into interior

rifts of the earth your innerness, too, fled.

I followed, looking back.

Everyone’s lungs were bleating like smoke alarms—

but softly. And we keep hearing a command

to forget. But to forget

would mean not helping everyone survive.

–after Yehuda Amichai