The Children the Bombs Overlooked

Stare into the brutish jaws

Of strife's heartless device

 

And turn your back to hell.

 

Resolute in a profound defiance,

No snake coiled your untempered spine.

Stoic-eyed and sage far beyond your years.

 

Stoic-eyed as youth's zeal was forcibly cleaved from your being.

Stoic-eyed as your homeland bore every strike of lightning

From those thousand scalding storms.

 

Stoic-eyed as the painted fields of your youth devolved

Into ragged horizons of lush minefields.

 

Stoic-eyed against the panorama of churning, wanton death.

 

Resolute in a profound defiance

 

You stared into the brutish jaws

Of strife's heartless device

And you turned your back to hell.

 

Alone, you forged your innermost tribulations

Into an unheralded saga of deep bearing.

Ever defiant like a glimmer of quartz in an iron mine,

You child the bombs overlooked.