Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Feb 2013
Hakim sat
on the banks of the Euphrates,
his discarded newspaper
lifting, page by page,
on the warm wind.

He had been reading of the countless dead.

Of course, his mind played first
over those he had known.
An uncle, two brothers,
his mother
and a grandfather of ninety six.

All of them,
definitely gone.

But according to the paper,
atop the official body count
some twenty thousand souls
may or may not
have survived the conflict,
and his head swam
with this crowded limbo
and the knowledge
that no-one knew.

Enough people
to populate a small town,
possibly dead.
Not important enough
for anyone to be sure.
And Hakim, eyes
glazed in the dusty sunshine,
began to wonder
whether he was one of them,
the uncounted,
the unacknowledged,
wandering vacantly
through his outstayed welcome,

simpy waiting
for someone
to write down
his name.
Alan McClure
Written by
Alan McClure
  1.2k
   Cody Boyles, Prabhu Iyer and Odi
Please log in to view and add comments on poems