How silent now, these pretty streets.
The bells no longer ring,
for weddings nor for funerals.
No children’s chorus sings.
The bodies rot in sun and wind.
The blood has long since dried.
The scavengers have had their fill.
For decades, no one’s cried.
Their open eyes long plucked away,
their stilled tongues taken too.
No youthful knees to bend in prayer,
and pale skins tinged with blue.
No, no one knows what killed these kin
in this barbaric way.
And soon the moon will rise, my dear,
so here we cannot stay.
The silence here has
strangled every single spirits life.
The butcher’s table just as full
with mutilation’s knife.
The rising wind now lifts the stench,
and laden tree boughs sway.
It drops into the silence
like a phantom touch to say,
We must not tarry anymore,
so come child let’s away.
We’ll leave the strangling silence
here to speak
another day.
So far behind, in silent wake,
to speak another day.
*art by Carole
BlackQuill 