After the remote attacks in Beirut, September 2024 Beirut 

Our pockets are full of blood,
as we hoard what we cannot hoard,
and lives that might have taken flight
and soared, have flown-away now
to the bower of a very different God
to that nightly visitor the killers of the light
bow to, snuffing as they do the innocent and the dead. 
We, the survivors, must now fill the hollows 
left-over, and think again of the impossible: 
what those who’ve passed might have wished
and done, the tattered paper of their bucket lists,
the small, shy children of their vanishing wills.
How does one speak to the victims of horror, 
when all we have are lips and paltry words? 

Omar Sabbagh is a widely published poet, writer and critic. The Day After is taken from Night Settles Upon The City, an evocative collection that blends personal experience with the brutal realities of life today in a war-torn Beirut. It is published by Daraja Press.