The news segment showed a communal grave
containing black plastic body bags, orange 
garden refuse bags and corpses wrapped in or 
barely shrouded in carpet or curtains from 
demolished houses being unceremoniously 
tossed and stacked into a long, deep, snow-edged pit;
anonymous bodies, once vibrant, energetic lives, 
waiting to be covered by the earth of their birth. 
Nothing indicated the cause for which they died 
but, as the camera panned away, a glimpse of 
the exhausted grave diggers in the background, 
risking their own deaths to bury bodies under shellfire, 
captured my horrified stare. Between them, in a
blanket, they swung the slender shape of a child,
torso and head covered but its thin malnourished 
legs visible, still clad in colorful patterned socks 
and clean, white shoes that, only weeks previously,
might have happily been playing hopscotch or dancing.

About the author:

Jeremy Gadd is an Australian poet whose most recent publication was ‘Driving Into the Dark’, a selection of 60 previously published poems (Ginninderra Press, Adelaide, 2022). He has Master of Arts and PhD degrees from the University of New England. He lives and writes in an old Federation-era house overlooking Botany Bay, the birthplace of modern Australia.

Feature image by Hugues de BUYER-MIMEURE on Unsplash