In Trenches
"The only thing working efficiently right now is burying the dead"
Ray Wilkinson The New York Times 07/24/94
Crowded with skeletons.
the trench damp and white,
bones cracking like ice,
ghosts grope with their fingers,
creeping from grave into grave.
Their sweat vibrates,
with my breath.
harder then a snake's breath,
A "bell jar" opens a mouth like a dumb toy,
heat carries cholera climbing in the dark.
The air feeds me, feeds skeletons.........
A lipless baby
sucks milk from a skeleton,
the breastless lady,
her bones whitc and shining like needles,
her hands stretching out into bamboo shoots.
Life comes and goes, easier than a day,
tife stands under the sun, more innocent than a dog.
The refugees wander
with their minds stretching out like hands
to the edge ofthe eanh.
Death and ants blow the black wind, soothing me,
in the name of God.
In the night.
the tast things he saw were soldiers,
coming to dig their eighth grave,
rats building their home besides his ankle.
An iron claw hugged me,
I was so breakable. like a cabbage.
The Prayers Entombed
"Mom. I am not afraid of ghost any more, they are good, they take care of me. I am
not
coming back. there is war."
------Orphan
A sound of praying from the deepest part of the tomb,
transforms the air from every hissing ofthe grass.
No language is here.
only ears deeply rooted into the earth.
listening to the loneliness of dust.
listening to corpses moving in rocks.
with their steps carefully landing like snow.
Faces fall down quietly in autumn.
Mom. this time I can not come home.
I am going to lay here.
where mud is warm.
earth scattered on my face. like your
big orange palms at night.
I am not afraid of ghosts any more.
Bones stick out of my shirt;
straw shrouds sink into my naked face:
dreams softly drip water,
children are continually classified as orphans in this world.
But Mom, I am safe here.
The nurse is sickened by the excitment,
more than old soldiers' surgery.
"INZIRE" like bees drilling her face.
She licks salt from her eyelids to feed me.
she is frightened of me,
she works like a witch piaying medical roulette.
The dead people are waiting at the gates ofheaven
to see God.
They are patient.
we have only one God.
note: "INZIRE" means "moving" in Rwandian.
Man
He digs out a dead baby from her womb.
Fish are lying around her,
gaping mouths desiring rain,
wheat harvests.
No sense of humanity.
The earth collects dead bodies as if
collecting antique wares.
Nails hanging in arms. with blood aowing.
warmer than wine.
Women make up their minds by bearing babies,
imagining their wombs are transparent houses.
Baby frogs crawl from between their legs.
liquid-like,
clear and green.
The dream like a screaming cat
reminds the innocent people
to tear their asses into pieces.
My eyes are salted,
with my shoulders quivering like leaves in wind,
sobbing.
Orphans are running to rat holes
with their feet heavier than nightmares.
The endless long road carries shadows to the sun.
bodies to death.
son and father combine into a donkey
digging their affair, their sex.
and their bitch.
