☛ We are inviting submission in the field of literature and literary theory in the form of article, book review, poem, short story, travelogue and interview for our regular April issue (Vol. 6, No. 2). The last date for submission is 31 March, 2025.

For the Disappeared- John Eppel (South Africa)

 


FOR THE DISAPPEARED

 

-         John Eppel (South Africa)



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-Order’s 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. 

 

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