Battered Children

Battered Children

Day after day in the suburbs of despair
something in the hearts of ordinary people
leaps out, flares into white consuming heat,
urges them to beat, and beat, and beat,
long after the screams have died away
and only a dreadful silence broods
in the cramped kitchen, the shattered nursery.

Day after day in the killing-fields of love
children die beneath the frenzied blows
of men and women rapt by that dark thing -
brutal and insensate, deep in our humanity -
which bursts the fragile bars of decency,
or love, or fear of pain, which we have set
to cage it in and keep us sane.

They take us beyond pity, beyond rage,
those tiny faces battered out of recognition
to the heart of an infinite desolation,
seized by the inescapable knowledge
that all this while, on our long pilgrimage
towards the light we carried in our hearts
our ancient, willing fealty to the dark.