Hymn for faded flags

Flags billow and fade
Into one another,
Colors bleeding
In the winds of war.
 
In peacetime, they hang limp,
Separate,
The colors keeping to themselves
In the dense silence before a new fight.
 
A craggy, ancient language
Bursts from a man’s chest,
Haunting in its tenderness
From which the angry passion of belonging rises.
 
Mothers’ warm tears trickle through time
And the dank crevices of stone walls
Into the tranquil sea,
The final resting place of children.

Upon driving past a row of flags billowing in the wind in the Pyrénées-Orientale.