This Is The Square Poem by Richard G Berg

and through the streets the blood of the children
ran simply, like children's blood.

PABLO NEURDA, from ‘Spain in Our Hearts'


This is the square
Where death will not go
Where blood becomes stone
Where breath like its fountain
Stints in needle flow

This is the square
Where aside from smart phones
It's to you that their moans
Gape from gashes, insulting the walls
At you they stare
As the source of their falls

This is the square
Where they come
Everyday, where they stray
Like lost flock
To warm themselves up, from a black coffee's cup
To cool themselves down, from summer's stifling frown
To fabricate peace escaping through gaps
Of tourist's vomit-stained laps

This is the square
Where the calendar chimed with death's drunken slime
30th January dated 30 small lives
Minutes ticked in terror
Blood slicked in slow error
Before another steel monster
Stunted the clock on 12
More unmapped minds

This is the square
Where God was elsewhere
When men high on high
Played with power in the sky
Dropping thumbs upon a little red switch
Opening doors through which conscience could glitch
Wanting it over soon to fly home
Be complete with their children, heavy as stone

This is the square
Where memory's mason
Carved a life of death
Into solid stones
A trembling impression of art
A chiselling of groans

This is the square
Where no painting has framed
Its diabolical paint
No poem squared off
Its Acacia-calmed restraint

This is the square
Where death shall not go
Where life is compacted
In the lightest show
Where children take over
From children who took cover

For one hour of morning
A school's square is theirs to command
Stones walls water
Green trees and a white future
Reaching out, a demand



January 2022/November 2024