Karolyne Makes Kliesel

SHARAMANG SILAS

The Weight of Trains

“I have gathered many consolations in life”

—Yehuda Amichai, Ruhama

Apathy Your baby’s head in a cup, they say to you, Drink. Your baby dressed in ice, they say to you, Hold.

Suspicion A man is guilty of murder the day he touches love. A child on his mother’s breasts questions his father’s eyes. Miracles

Like a mother, I have kissed children born in fire. I have held in my arms angels buried in rubble. But nothing beats the boy in the air who failed to land like a human before his mother.

Silence

Abdulbais! Abdulbais! Abdulbais!

Exit If your name departs my tongue, Abdulbais, I refuse my memories.

Bewilderment Is this blood? The trainmaster asks three women. Forgive us, they answer. We cannot explain the streets flooded by a weeping race.

Witness

Across St. Anthony’s cathedral, the gathering mothers mourn their children leaving the same way Jesus was dragged with the wood of sorrow in Jerusalem.

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