“Fire, Brothers, Fire!”                        
                                     H.N. Bialik, “The Village is Burning”

The girl thrown down on her back right now           
doesn’t care what you call the thing
that is happening to her:
horror, holocaust, the end of the world or rape
any more than she cares
what the name is of the soldier
who is finishing her off like a leg of lamb.

The mud her shoulders are being buried in
with rhythmic thrusts
was once called land, was once called homeland.
The blank indifference stretched above her open eyes                       
was once called sky, and rumor had it
there was a god up there.

Those who sit on the barbed wire fence of another horror
reviewing names that might fit this thing
that is going on right now,
stand right there in the circle of laughing soldiers,
cataloging horrors.  

Fire, strangers, fire. The girl is burning.
Even if she does get up, like my mother                      
she‘ll still be lying down for years.  
In her well-lit kitchen she will hold out to her son
arms covered with the scars
of frying pans and suicide.