FOR THE DISAPPEARED

FOR THE DISAPPEARED

FOR THE DISAPPEARED

For those who burn or float face down, what tears;

what family protests smashed by rifle butts;
what withered whispers in what wasted ears,
of spilling, like beans, the  brains and the guts?
For those in anthills or in mine shafts stuffed
like unironed washing, load on jumbled load
(one still in rusty leg-irons, one handcuffed),
what bells, what bugles, what intended ode?



But vigils, tongueless, levitate the night
while Law-and-Orders’ boots respond to spit,
and somewhere in a rural hut, a light
is casting restless shadow-shapes that flit
and flicker, not fading before the dawn,
but waiting, like winking coals, to be born.