stones and bones

- Lucile Clifton

here is a country where old men
gather in the capitol and
speak their language filled with
stones
their syllables are chips of bone
they speak of lifting up a creed
while cold and still there under
their tongue is somebody else's child
or mine
bones and stones
our ears bleed
red and white and blue

from: Poets Against the War, Sam Hamill, Sally Anderson, et al, ed.
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