In the streets, trails of dust, ruddyand black and yellow-green,settled on them like the dew s of heaven
apple-sweet but acrid, and their eyeswere opened finally, fixedsideways on dirt and the eternal.
Pompeiian bodies, frozen by afire too cruel to be natural,children who had eaten breakfast
with their mothers took theirsupper with their ancestors. In themountains, only insistent echoes
of silence, leaving the livingto pin “victim” or “martyr”on a stiff breast. In poisoned
earth the wild fruits of Halabjawill grow, as stunted as memoryand as bitter as knowledge.