the land lies blank but for the reconstructed
structures and the young trees lately planted, a few
faint lines of roads shallowly traced. I listen for
the principal people, my eyes closed, but all I hear
are the voices of my children, running over the sod.
why did this happen, they ask me after the park film
is over. I struggle to explain. I do not even myself know
the full why of these things. one day I will correct
the tense of their question, but not today.

when they built the great scar of a road
that runs along the Tennessee, they leveled
a great ancient mound, gashed open its sides and ground down
on its lowest levels, tore out the bones of the ancestors
and wheelbarrowed them to the bank,
dumped them in the river.

tonight I read of the armored bulldozers
working over the dwellings of the dead
in Jabaliya, Shajaiye, no respite even in the grave.
always the present tense. history does not repeat,
it is a long and bloody line, without stopping.