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
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem