Europe, 1945
Anthony Cronin International Poetry Prize, 2nd Place (2018)
They buried their differences and their dead,
Stuck new highways on fresh wounds.
Bones sank deeper into earth,
Crows pecked across the fields,
And new people – taller, fairer –
Moved in where the other ones had left.
Things started up again.
Only now,
At dusk,
When the dews of night arose,
And mothers called their children home,
The silence that came back
From fields, and hills, and skies,
Was one that cried and cried.
Stuck new highways on fresh wounds.
Bones sank deeper into earth,
Crows pecked across the fields,
And new people – taller, fairer –
Moved in where the other ones had left.
Things started up again.
Only now,
At dusk,
When the dews of night arose,
And mothers called their children home,
The silence that came back
From fields, and hills, and skies,
Was one that cried and cried.