“No voice” scrawls a Turkish
searcher on one standing half-wall
in rubble, as three others turn away—
lugging gurneys, water, thermoses of tea,
jackhammers, shovels, rope, the little
that rhymes with hope, as bleak
eyes and stooped shoulders won’t—
whose sisters, cousins, mothers, beloveds
went to bed in the nightly shower
of last looks out to the garden, a late
cardamom milk, good night, good
night, and lie now voiceless, hours,
then days gone. What earth
can shrug our city down to.
The last time I heard my mother’s
lilt, it was nothing, bare scraped
breath, the hospice worker’s
phone there in our old city held to her
stilled ear—I don’t mean earthquake
and that are the same—but I could
not get there to her across a pandemic
continent I’d have dug away to find her.
Still, “yes,” I know she sighed then.
Now a searcher’s eyes run
with dust and thirst and still
won’t cease. A raw call,
unanswered. Gloved knuckles
bleed at another stone.