Today’s Lesson
kelly neal
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
—T.S.Eliot
70
my students work over the abstract
idea of redemption in three stories
as a preparation for the wasteland
which we will read for the next class
one thousand miles away students
hide as their classmates are killed
and we are told there is nothing
nothing we can do except pray
prayers are useless balms for the dead
and pale recompense for the living
who must clean blood from walls
and mix memory into the earth
devoid of hope near an open door
we are in a hell we have created
(February 14, 2018)