All the Zoos in Germany

The unintended causalities of

 

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        didn't cry or scream or

 

        fall to their knees pleading to

 

        a god beyond the blackening skies.

 

        They made inhuman sounds from their

 

        dwellings behind glass, wire, and concrete

 

        and had no conception of a deity, not

 

        needing it. Running more on instinct than

 

        their sapien keepers, they tried

 

                  to run or hide instead.

 

        Perhaps this was a blessing, saving

 

        them from the hours of trying to coalesce

 

        the events of the day into a peaceful melody,

 

        finding harmonious patterns in the smoke --

 

        anything to provide  a semblance of reason

 

        in the world.

 

 

        In DRESDEN a gibbons reached out to its trainer,

 

        only blood stumps left for arms, seeking safety

 

        in the arms of the human -- unaware that humans

 

        were responsible for the bangs, booms, and fires

 

        around him -- while nearly forty rhesus monkeys escaped to the trees,

 

        only prolonging their perishing to the next day

 

        from drinking the irradiated water.

 

        The hippopotamuses drowned in their water basins,

 

        pinned down by wayward debris.

 

 

        In FRANKFURT bombs smashed seal cages

 

        and busted the aquarium -- fish left to gasp for

 

        water, finding only air.

 

        The injured cats, bears, and others had to

 

        be put out of their misery with the sweet relief

 

        of a bullet.

 

      

         And in DUSSELDORF the smoke cleared to reveal

 

         nothing but a solitary wall guarding over two

 

         hundred bomb craters, a monolith sentinel for a

 

         new wasteland.

 

 

         The scenes repeated themselves in MUNICH, HEIDELBURG, and        WUPPERTAL.

 

         And in BERLIN stunned lions took to the streets,

 

         and large snakes slithered amongst crowds of people

 

         caught in the hellfire cataclysm.

 

         The first explosion killed the only elephant

 

         in the city,

 

         an unintended casualty of 

 

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                         bombs.