"September 2004 In times of peace the sons will
bury their fathers.
In times of war fathers bury their sons."
-Thucydides
A young boy has rummaged for scraps of wood & nailed
them to approximate the shape of an AK 47 automatic rifle.
His soon-to-be army issue web-belt
a single string he’s slung across his back
will have to do (as the love song says)
until the real thing comes along.
***
There’s a farmer wandering the roads of Rwanda with four bent scythes
stretched across his back:
Death in an old disguise?
Maybe just another scavenger plying his trade?
***
Cahoots & chortling recruits parade / a pole / they’ve strung
with the heads, hearts & testicles of the fallen.
As the maimed try to rise they flail & collide & it’s then
the Minotaur comes sniffs the air & finding blood, feasts on the remains:
no bodies left to rot, no bones to store. No relics to hang on your slim
altars.
***
The photographers that survive are always suspect:
“Where were you when he was shot?” “Where were you when
the tanks rolled in?”
“Where were you when she was shattered by the mines?”
“ Where . . .?”
“Where – Indeed.” Here. In the trench. In the trench
we’ve scooped from sand & broken plates,
where we’ve been trapped in a rain of blood & shredded skin
& once a leg & even arms & when we can,
we run with the stench & the stuff that clings & my film &
. . .
***
If not me than who?
Who will bury this desiccated corpse / already a meal for the buzzards
that hover here?
The joke that passes says, “If you steal from these well-meaning
janitors you will be the first to be swept up in your next life.”
I’m inclined to pass & walk away . . . & yet,
why not these birds? I mean . . . ***
