The crabgrass towers over the dirt
at the castle ruins. The children
trample it down, in freewheeling
approximations of massacres past.
Only the echoes, only the hints of the shadows
of the echoes, are made to last.
The hostages run from the cannon,
the book losing a few pages in the telling.
Just think, this very rampart,
conceived to guard against terror,
and terrify in kind:
now, in pieces, greeting full wonder
from regenerated minds.