Aleppo in Adjacent Mourning

Children in the lap of magma

Make out of the ashes a shouting 

Teddy bear.

Neither found, nor self-propelled

Ballistic missiles playing hide-and-seek

Leaving twenty-first-century orphans

To a futile seek.

Flayed is Tadmur between powers insane

Between Bald Eagle and Grim Reaper stained

Nothing remains but a walking rubble 

Of the silhouette of a family in rented refuge.

Oh World! Aleppo oozes eclipsed dawns

Oozes an inviolable Penthos.

Victoria will rise above an embossed

Design lipped by a single mother bereft

Above a wind-up toy cherished  and left.