The eye of age sees in events
Not only now, but then.
They leave behind a baggage trail
Which leads us back
into the past ..
A broken shoe, discarded toy,
Dropped
in the rubble of a Syrian town
By a child swept up
in terror..
Leads to the ghetto,
to the siren wailing,
To the axe in the thatch,
the longship beached on the shore..
the dogs baying in the marshes
the bodies curved in sudden stone.
The grief for one becomes the grief for all.