The Shoe

The strong stench of burnt concrete
Mingled with another and another wheeze,
An olfactory overdose stirs the nostrils
into an involuntary, embarrassed sneeze;
Three days after the burning genocide
smoke still wafts with the breeze.
Under a pile of undefinable ashes
under an ashen canvas crease

I saw it peeking out like a scared haunted animal
The only char-free object in a blackened room,
Human remains were long gone from that black hole
Eight members aged three to seventy, gone to their doom.
And there it sat, in mute testimony to inhuman savagery:
A three-year-old's shoe that lived on in the gloom.

(November, 1984)