Song for the Shooters
        Washington Post, 1 October 2015
                —Barack Obama, Washington Post, 1 October 2015

How this became routine, no one can tell.
The bashful toddler's ringlet-clouded head,
how early did it learn the song of hell?

The nattering of talking heads, so shrill
it bored into the childish mind and bred?
How is this now routine? No one can tell.

The silent, brooding boys who tripped and fell
down through the blacklight labyrinth of dread
whose only soundtrack is the song of hell?

We guess they held a hurt, its heft, its chill,
and gripped a fury till their fingers bled—
routine, routine. This little we can tell:

post office, movie theater, shopping mall,
and schoolroom whence all innocence is fled
ring with the wretched antiphons of hell.

What love, ringing its changes on the knell
of cell phones from the pockets of the dead,
must hear routine, routine? No one can tell
how human ears unhear the song of hell.

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Copyright © 2021 Maryann Corbett All rights reserved
from In Code
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission