Gone

Like Shakespeare’s Macduff
all my little ones are gone.
Disappeared one by one
under the mushroom forest.
Gone like the wild animals and people’s pets.
All these lost and I merely tabulated
their disappearance and went on.
But now my little ones are gone.
I did not know the little children would die first.
It’s wrong to be alive when they are dead.

—a man
  Carpathian Mountains
  Europe