Portside

Can’t You Hear the Children?

By Fred Norman

A year old, maybe. Not two, but big for a year.
He’s sitting in the dirt in a cleared space
in the middle of a bombed-out city of rubble.
No clothes. Screaming. Face wet with tears.
Maaaaa! he screams, calling for his mother
in that ancient universal plea for help, gulps
the air, spittle drooling from his mouth, sobs
bubbling from his saliva-webbed lips, words
soon to be too quiet to hear — Maama, he begs.

Maama.
Can you see him?
Can you hear him calling you?

Where is he and where are you and where are we?
Where, for most of us, of course, depends on when,
on what specific day and date, on the holiday de jour,
on the war date we’re celebrating, on the flags we’re flying.
It could be Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Dresden. Falujah, Vietnam.
It could be a little girl running down a country road, naked,
mouth open in a howl, the heat of napalm closing in behind.
It could be any place that we destroyed, any family we killed.
It could be any day in any year in the history of the human race
but it is, in fact, right now, and it is, in fact, close, right here,
us.

Listen!

Can’t you hear the children screaming?

Fred Norman is a 10-year military veteran of the Marines and Air Force who is now a Peace Activist and writer whose poetry focuses on antiwar themes. He is a graduate of University of San Francisco's Masters in Writing Program and lives in Pleasanton, California.
His poems can be found at www.peacehost.net/Crosses/poetry.htm