The Innocents at Sandy Hook
Nothing can reach you now, not lead or steel,
or what life itself eventually reveals.
No more studies of kindness or courtesy,
nor grace or charity, all is needless now.
All is needless now, sky, world, family
grieving for their bundles of purity,
now beyond disgrace, failure, winter streets,
or whatever attacks, and then retreats.
Classrooms emptied of children’s things,
paper and paste, and love’s imaginings,
bundles of peace, Christmas-blessed
with the unborn and the dead at rest,
nothing can reach you now, not lead or steel
or what life itself eventually reveals.
Copyright Credit: Michael Gessner, "The Innocents at Sandy Hook" from Selected Poems. Copyright © 2016 by Michael Gessner. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Source: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2016)