les enfants

.

Hello say I
to the tangle of hair
and then face
that emerges from the knots of coverings
by way of a good morning
how are you feeling?
I am fine how are you feeling?
Stretching kissing sleep is rubbed out from the eyes lazily
in the squinted at late morning light.

I am feeling ok
but at moments like this I can not help thinking of the children
and this makes me sad.
What children do you mean?
I mean the children;
les enfants, if you prefer to hear me say so in your own tongue.

The children of the world.
I can not but think of them at these times
in all their darling sufferings, those poor little orphans.

The poor little street urchins with their faces covered in soot,
lowered down chimneys
and suffocating on the collected ash,
then beaten soundly by their sweep keepers
and send off to sleep in the draughty attic
with not more supper than a crust of bread,

and little dears marched off in their thread bare coats,
barely keeping out the cold winter wind
and the snow coming in damp
through the cracked leather of their boots

while they file in long lines up to the doorways
of the blacking factories
and brick works
that still run today despite the long distance we have travelled
since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

How many of these sweet angels have been accidentally tangled up
in the works of the giant throbbing roaring machines
and shredded like plates of pork
between the gargantuan tines of the threshers
then left in fleshy bloody ribbons
for the horror of all to see
along the floorways of the factory?
Just think of those terrible ribbons of gore,
still punctuated with the darling buttons that once decorated the child’s duffel coat,
just think of those rosy cheeks
and golden curls
flattened and mixed in with sizzling brain matter
beneath the fallen and shattered
but still molten red iron core
that dropped so suddenly
and so wretchedly
from the upper galleries of the foundry.

Nay, imagine (why I shudder to even say such things)
all of the little ones burning down into piles of ash
as a radioactive bomb detonates over their city,
the wild flowers they had just gathered
bursting suddenly into little plumes of flame
in the instant before
their tiny hands and their precious fingers melt away.

Imagine, if you will, a bomb blast,
and then among the rubble
and the wafting smoke you discover a single miniature hand,
severed by the explosion from its owner,
the body indeed completely vaporized,
but still those fingers are wrapped round the wrist of a tiny
now utterly charred doll.

And a tongue runs playfully from my exposed hipbone up to the base of my neck
and then scattered kisses make their way back down to my hips.
Do you want me to shut up about this?