After Bruegel, Pieter the Elder, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1565,
(The Royal Collection)

Doctored on Emperor’s orders
scratched off the panel with palette or butterknife,
then hidden behind pale, painted goose wings,
we can just make out the tiny dangling boots.

Inside cloth bundles are tight little limbs,
closed faces, pressed like dumplings in string.
A gaggle of savaged turkeys, wingspans open,
conceals a heap of school friends, stiff leg bones,
hearts no longer beating.

No one risks the sword for a terracotta pot.
These families do not wail and stagger,
tearing at their hair and clothes and eyes
for the loss of loaves or roasted fowl.

You didn’t think to whitewash over
these anguished parents? Look at them,
under the tempera glaze they can still smell
the fresh blood of their children in the snow.

 

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From Magma 94

 

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