ELEGY FOR TWENTY SOULS
to the parents of a fallen sparrow
Words cannot
express the grief nor the sorrow
That fills my
soul to learn of these twenty lives
Now lost forever,
gone forever, to sleep forever
Accompanied now in
death as in life by the souls
Of their six
courageous protectors—brave souls!
And by the tears
of their parents, by the prayers
Of countless
millions of their fellow countrymen
Twenty born to
die and not to live
No wise sage can
ever tell us why
None shook us
from our complacent sleep
Roused us from
our refuge in fantasy’s deep
Destiny has taken
from us the lives of these twenty souls
And from, whoever
hitherto remained unscath’d,
Our innocence as
well, strange truth!
Leaving our hearts
to sob and our minds to weep
Pondering the
imponderable
Our naïve beliefs
destroyed in a moment of utter madness!
Our nation shocked
to the core of its essence!
Asking “how could
we ever let it come to this?”
When now we see
the havoc these acts revealed!
Beneath the
sunless sky and moonless night
Twenty fatal
streaks of lightning erupted in thunder
Twenty flaming
arrows like shafts of darken’d light
Has torn these brave
hearts and young souls asunder
In a land of
beauty and serenity and purpos’d consecration
All the previous
acts of violent intrusion and death
Could not prepare
the nation for this ultimate desecration
That took from
these sweet children their last precious breath
The beauty of the
rose, the rainbow colors of forest and field
The gurgling
brook, the wide open spaces of field and sky
Cannot overcome
the fatal harm thrust unwelcom’d upon us
Where death
trumps all that we build
Cannot allow us
to travel backwards in time
To the last
afforded moment before destiny strikes
To confront the
man and yell “You must yield!”
We cannot now
know the why or wherefore
Such unsought
death and tragic sorrow
Should come
ashore to these precious lands
Worked and
muscl’d into shape and destiny
By the fruits of
labor of unknown callous’d hands
Where minds
breathed free, where souls did soar
We can never
speak to his ears on the morning of that day
Who knew not how
twisted and broken his mind had become
To urge him away
from his darken’d path of death and revenge
To offer a hand
of friendship and accompany him not to school—
No, never a school!—but
to the police, the home, the hospital
To receive the
doctor’s care he needed but no one knew, too late
We cannot be
there in time to persuade him home again,
When first he
decided to commit such bloodshed and carnage
Of senseless
mayhem without purpose or hope of redemption
This ultimate act
of murderous rampage and heinous suicide
We cannot now
assuage our most private fears
Or even tell
ourselves why our children’s fate
Should end up in
the hands of one such as he
Tempting us with
the self-destroying need to hate
Rather than to
always treasure and celebrate
The goodness and
eternity of precious love--
The love that
these children sweetly shared
Are the memories
we must safeguard
In order to build
a better world:
It is their last
wish, their last gift to you
It is their love
that triumphs!
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