When US Army veteran A. V. Levine saw a recent photo of a five-year-old Syrian girl from Aleppo, her clothing torn by the effects of a barrel bomb, her stare blank with shock, it broke his heart. He wrote this poem in response.

1. This child born to grief
May live a while…

Even as war grinds
Neighborhoods to dust

Safe for a moment
In outlawed time—

Impossible to measure
Her chances

As the siege worsens and death
Daily barrels down

2. Born to grief this child
may outlive her sibs…

Or they may live
A while longer…

Even as the family in a snap
May be torn to rags

Or at moment’s end
endure obliteration

3. This child born to grief
May yet live a while longer…

While bomb-fall
And hunger kill equally

The heart and body
Of Aleppo.

Photograph: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development (public domain).