The story unfolds in many places: in the modern age
it takes place in Houla, before this in Constantinople,
and earlier still on the hilltops of Jerusalem
(an echo of the descendants of Amalek, may he not be forgotten).
The night falls and brutal men walk within it.
Their footsteps are unspeakable, their weapons split the air
once, then handfuls and dozens and scores and hundreds of times and forever
the air is broken and even the beasts that feast upon carrion are wary.
The door is torn from the hinges, the family huddles together in a corner.
Both men, a day laborer and his decrepit father, are taken quickly outside.
The wife of the younger screams out "Why do you take them?"
and is silenced with a stroke of a truncheon that splits her head
from ear to eye. Suddenly five or six children are running
but the only door is blocked by a titan who leers and laughs
and he smells like a festival of sacrifice and his torch is the moon.
The other men within the house kill the youngest child, a girl, first,
then a boy about six years of age. A girl of nine years lunges
at the savage men like a hero. She falls.
Her older brother falls beside and quietly covers himself
in the blood of his family and he tries not to breathe
and not to cough and he prays silently, which is not his custom.
The other children are dispatched without excessive torture;
the woman who lays unconscious receives the mercy stroke.
The men illuminate the house and, satisfied than none remain alive,
continue up the cobble-stoned street.
The boy inhales the red-heavy rust of the night.
The scene repeats.
