A Pity Beyond All Telling (For Aylan) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

A PITY BEYOND ALL TELLING
(for Aylan)

This little death
so enormous it

eclipses speech

words can not survive
your tiny dying.

Death decants you
into the iconic

photo that screams
in the mind

as wave after wave
of people so real

crash upon the shores
of our consciousness

people so real
they could be you or I

only trapped
in the wrong moment

the wrong time
a news item

human cargo
mere flotsam jetsam

our thoughts a drifting
abandoned ship

our minds derelict

the ebb and flow
of time.

Your tiny dying
accusing us

of being human and
not human enough.

****

If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.

Aesop’s 'The Fox in the Well