A Single Flower

A single flower grows from blackened ground.
Good soil, this-- now drenched with blood and drowned
with tears of salt, and lined with shattered heads
and bloodstained hands, last gestures of the dead.
Too many here for living hands to count.

Later, when all the bodies have been found,
and silence follows all the bitter sounds
of mourning-- still it can be said,
a single flower grows.

A graveyard here, where once there stood a town.
Some father's daughter in her wedding gown,
Some mother's son, just getting out of bed,
God gathered up each single severed thread.
On every murdered child's burial mound,
a single flower grows.