By CHERYL L. DAYTEC*

The coppice and orchards  became graveyards
Fashioned like desolation,  their  color is violence
Flowers for all seasons have been stunted, wilted
What sprouts  from  battlefields but odious  hate
Whose thirst is quenched not by  water but blood
Yearning not for sunshine but the yawning torment

Of butchered innocence, sprawled on power’s dais?
The tarnished  ground is drenched with forlorn tears
Of parents  orphaned by babies who just outgrew cribs
Become  ghosts  probing the scruples of the world
Watching  the gripping horror in imposed  stillness
The grime of  perversion thickens on its inutile hands

Silence cannot be golden when it is limpid  sanction
Of evil randomly pushing  buttons of death machines
Another great  flood will not  sluice the world’s guilt
Countenance  in silence is as vile  as pulling triggers
Of armaments trained on kindergarten playgrounds
Do not ask who answers  for the  bloodbath. Ask how

Silence can be drowned by the protest of conscience

* The author is an Associate Professor at St. Louis University and a columnist of Nordis. You can visit her weblog at http://smorgasbordandothers.blogspot.com; http://beautybeyondbeauty.blogspot.com