poetry Suffer the Children, Forbid Them Not

"a mirror/ if our eyes are strong enough," so the poet J. David Cummings evokes the death of children: at Hiroshima, on the Mediterranean today.

J. David Cummings Portside
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Suffer the Children, Forbid Them Not

By J. David Cummings

                             “But Jesus said, Suffer the little children,    

                             and forbid them not, to come unto me:    

                             for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
                                                                             —Mathew 19: 14

**********************************************

What can anyone do now

but remember the children in the

streets, eight forty-five, dressed

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in their clean uniforms,

on their way to school, walking

together, chirping like birds

when the sky became the sun?

What can anyone do now but see

it pure in the mind as time

relinquishes time and one arrives

among them there in the knife-

edge moment— ash not ash,

shadow and light, for they were

not forbidden?

   —Monday, August 6, 1945
 
Hiroshima, Japan **********************************************

What can anyone do now? His

name was Alan Kurdi or maybe

Aylan Shenu. He’s face down, a

small package the sea has

returned to us, the photograph

a mirror if our eyes are strong

enough.

What can anyone do, now?

The facts are clouding over,

the mirror fogs. Quickly then:

his jersey a touch of red, the

left hand open, upturned.

The water kept two others,

for they were not forbidden.
   
—Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Bodrum, Turkey

J. David Cummings won the 2013 Richard Snyder Prize for Tancho (Ashland Press). He lives in northern California.