IN MEMORY OF NERMIN DIVOVIC

Death in Sarajevo: U.N. Firefighters with a 7-year-old boy killed by a Serbian sniper.

Photo credit: Enric Marti -- AP

The Gray Old Men

January 1 [1995] marks a thousand days of
Siege in Sarajevo where seven-year-old
Nermin Divovic was hit in the face
By a Serbian sniper's bullet.
He could be a little boy
Sleeping in the asphalt road
As if tired from Christmas shopping
On a cold winter's day.
The large pool of deep red blood
Flowing from his face causes us
To yell in the night for Nermin to awake
His blue and purple jacket, bright green pants
and dirty-white sneakers.
Do you think that the old gray men who
Speak for peace see Nermin Divovic in themselves?
Their faces grown pale from a thousand days of talk,
their supine souls devoid of life?
The Gestapo got Anne Frank,
The Bomb Sadako Sasaki.
The Sniper's bullet got Nermin Divovic,
Cowardice the gray old men.

-- Gerard Brooker, an American high school principal.