Massacre at Lamerd

Elahe’s body was eventually brought out

from beneath the shattered tin roof

of the sports hall in Lamerd.

Her light, her laugh, her training, her dreams,

turned to dust again by clanging gongs of men

who speak the tongue of angels without love in their hearts.

The ancient mountains can only hear her father wail,

that every meal, every hour worked, every purchase

of the sneakers and equipment that spite the sanctions,

each trip past the industrial district to the edge of town,

it was building toward something, building Elahe,

his crucible for a promise, his worth in the world.

He’d learn that in principle,

Christ triumphs as a shattered body

on Golgatha, punished for its innocence,

but Christ triumphant in practice is

an incisive priest of empire, a holy conquest,

the bodies and blood of martyrs in a trophy case.

Read the article that inspired this poem, from Drop Site News.