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.
****